Poor Miss Clavel! In "an old house in Paris that was covered with vines," Miss Clavel oversees the education of 12 little girls, the littlest of whom is the mischievous Madeline. Despite her size, she fearlessly pooh-poohs the tiger in the zoo and frightens Miss Clavel with her adventurous antics. When she awakens the entire house with her plaintive cries in the middle of the night, Doctor Cohn whisks the appendicitis-stricken Madeline off to the hospital where, some two hours later, she awakens to find a scar on her stomach! The scar (not to mention the flowers, toys, and candy given to Madeline by her father) proves quite interesting to the rest of Miss Clavel's charges when they make a special trip to visit her. Ludwig Bemelmans's lilting rhymes are music to children's ears, and the quirky, oddly perfect drawings of the girls in "two straight lines" lend an enticing Parisian flavor to this perennial children's favorite.

Genre: Fiction (Childrens)