Instruct: Classify an Amazon review as either positive or negative.
Query: Superficial

The fact that this book won a Newbery Honor award makes me wonder about the value of the Newbery rating system. The characters, while zany, were often unpleasant and only superficially drawn. The editor appears to have been asleep, given the many punctuation and grammatical errors throughout the book. The reference to alcohol was inappropriate in a children's book; and the burning of a guinea pig's fur was really not the sort of trauma I want inflicted on a child. Finally, the fact that the protagonist, an 11-year-old girl, loses part of a finger and part of a toe seems a bit gruesome for a book billed as an amusing piece of entertainment for young children. The death of one of the characters was only leavened by the fact that the reader never really comes to care about that character, or any other, for that matter. What a disappointment!