Amanda Adams Loves Herbie Hickle

Ted McGee is an associate professor of English specializing in
children’s literature at St. Jerome’s College, University of
Waterloo.

Amanda loves Herbie but doesn’t know how to express her feelings. Four
times she proposes just telling him; four times her girlfriends counter
with alternatives lest some catastrophe befall him: “No, no, no ...
You know boys. If you tell him, his eyes might cross and stay that way
forever.” Four times their “helpful” methods of indirection
produce catastrophic results, until Amanda finally confesses the truth.
Farmer adds a fifth and final reversal: although Amanda gets a week of
detentions for disrupting the class, Herbie’s there to walk her home
from school each day.

The impact of the Munsch-Martchenko collaborations on stories for young
children is felt not only in the everyday subject matter and repetitive
structure of Farmer’s story but also in the bold cartoon-style
illustrations by Daniel Sylvestre. Given the paring down of the text,
the pictures are crucial for characterization: they portray intense
emotion in close-up, establish the multiracial character of the school,
and provide glimpses of other sides of the children’s lives by showing
them skateboarding, playing soccer, and going to the movies. Whether the
jazzy style of this book (like that of many a Munsch) is conducive to
learning is debatable, but there is in Amanda Adams Loves Herbie Hickle
some useful material on stereotypical boys and stereotypical girls, on
puppy love, and on the value of forthrightness. Recommended.