Phineas L. MacGuire-a.k.a. Mac-aims to be the best fourth-grade scientist ever. It's a tall order, but he's confident that he can achieve his goal, especially since Aretha has asked him to help her earn a Girl Scout badge by creating the mold that produces penicillin. How many fourth graders can say they've reproduced penicillin? None, as far as Mac knows. And who knows more about mold than Mac? But soon Mac is busy managing Ben's campaign for class president and dealing with his weird new babysitter. How can he focus on mold?

 

This book has been graded for interest at 8-12 years.

There are 224 pages in this book. This book was published 2010 by Simon & Schuster .

Frances O Roark Dowell is the editor and co-founder of Dream/Girl, an arts magazine for girls and has been Poet in Residence at Duke University. She has had dozens of poems published in literary journals, and is the author of two previous children's novels, Dovey Coe and Where I'd Like to Be. She lives in North Carolina with her husband and two sons. Preston McDaniels is the illustrator of the Phineas L. MacGuire series and Cynthia Rylant's Lighthouse Family series. He lives in Aurora, Nebraska, with his wife and two daughters.