This niftily packaged little chapter book recounts the ordeals of Zoe Bent, a third-grader with a self-esteem problem. School last year was like a big, happy party, she recalls wistfully: “A baboon could feel special in Grade Two.” But the third grade is burdened with timetables, computers, and books with too many words. Zoe is lousy at math and sports. She lacks designer clothes and glamorous parents. To fill the gap, to feel special once again, she turns to lying. “Check it out,” Zoe says – and we’re on red alert that a whopper is soon to follow. Soon she is screwing up in classic liar tradition, and nobody believes any of the really fantastic true stuff in her life.

To get to this point we go through a lot of zany Daniel Pinkwaterish stuff about nuclear toilets and electric eagles’ nests that could be very amusing to the average eight-year-old – maybe. Korman’s glib, frenetic narration is less funny than it is sitcom (and American: on the very first page Zoe is “pledging allegiance” as she rushes late to class). Frequently Korman settles for cliché over fresh expression, as when Zoe says, for example, “Some grownups must think that kids are total idiots.” Surely even a kid who was a total idiot could have risen to the occasion for a richer figure of speech? For the reader, the real problem with Zoe’s lies is not that they’re the product of an overactive imagination but that they’re transparent and tedious; nobody believes them. And, rather confusingly, the writer blurs the line between truth and fantasy as thoroughly as his character: he asks us to believe Zoe really is telling the truth about the giant eagle eating peanut butter in her back yard. She may be, but is Korman?

Still, this book is meant to entertain, not to challenge a young reader philosophically. JoAnn Adinolfi’s illustrations are funky and stylish, their surrealism nicely matched to Korman’s trademark cool. And we get to like Zoe, who is basically a nice kid, and we’re pleased when her life in the third grade begins to improve.