Angels Inc. by Bruce McBay

I liked the premise of this book: two children form a club to help people who need it, but their good intentions cause problems. The execution, however, is rather choppy, making it difficult for the reader to identify with the children. I think this is a cute early reader, and the urge to do good provides ample discussion opportunities for parents to ask children to think about how they can help others. In a brief chapter book, there were really too many attempts to help others crammed in. There is some humor, but every scene is so brief and superficial that it's not very well developed. Further, the children's motives are unclear. Clueless Wendy decides out of the blue that she'd like to help people (which is commendable, but not explained) and Zach agrees to go along with her plan as long as he can eat ice cream every day. Zach appears to understand (in a way that Wendy does not) that their actions are causing problems rather than solving them, but he doesn't seem particularly bothered by that. A plotline about neighborhood thieves is thrown in near the end, which is so abrupt I checked to be sure my copy wasn't missing the final pages.

Source disclosure: I received a review copy of this book through LibraryThing.