![]() ![]() ![]() In its drive for humor, the book plays fast and loose with Keats' understanding level so that he's at times precociously informed but more often comically misconstruing things (though he can visually identify the designer Halston and correctly employ the word "felon," he confuses "infection" and "affection"), and adults may be better able than youngsters to laugh at a story wherein the joke tends to be on the kids. His oldest sister, Lulu, is appalled, however, and she spends the ensuing months cringing at the manny's interactions and documenting his "transgressions" in a document known as "The Manny Files." Over the course of the next several months, Keats weathers the death of his beloved grandmother, tries to find an identity at school apart from just being Lulu's little brother, withstands constant needling by an unpleasant classmate, and, most of all, hopes fervently that Lulu fails at her attempt to get the manny fired. When the Dalinger family, with its obstreperous four kids, gets a new nanny who calls himself "the manny," third-grader and narrator Keats is thrilled with the charismatic and exuberant new figure in his life. ![]()
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