Ivy + Bean Bound to be Bad (#5) by Annie Barrows

★★

This book was surprisingly... boring. Other books that I've read in this series all have a solid plot to drive the story along, but this one just seemed lacking.

Ivy was on a mission to be "pure of heart" in order to attract wild animals who would love her for her goodness. It seemed to me that Ivy's inspiration came from having seen a picture of St. Francis of Assisi, and it would have been nice if the book had mentioned him by name, like how Book 3 mentioned Mary Anning by name. Anyway, Ivy decided that the best way to be good would be for Bean to be especially bad, and then Ivy could reform her. Somehow, the story just didn't pull me in. I wasn't really interested in finding out what would happen next.

Now, you might think, from my previous reviews of these books, that the "bad" versus "good" behavior would turn me off. Actually, I liked the tone set by the opening chapters, in which Bean's bad behavior was explicitly presented as "bad", and she finally faced clear consequences for her actions. Even when Bean - and the other neighborhood kids - were purposely trying to behave badly, I was somehow less bothered by the bad behavior in this book than in other Ivy + Bean books because in this case, the context showed that the kids clearly understood that they were behaving badly. They chose to behave badly, which means they understood that bad behavior resulted from bad decisions. (In other Ivy + Bean books, bad behavior comes across as just "regular behavior", and consequences are rare.)

Ironically, Isabelle was turned off enough by the bad behavior in this book that she at first gave it 2 stars! But then she upgraded it to 4 stars because she admitted that she still enjoyed the book. And she did read it mostly in one sitting, with just one snack break.

Most of the bad behavior in this book did not involve mistreating others, but when it did, I was on the one hand gratified that Ivy and Bean did not get away with their meanness (finally!), but on the other hand disappointed that the other kids returned meanness with more meanness (even if it was kind of funny).