Available:*
Library | Call Number | Status |
|---|---|---|
Searching... Mount Angel Public Library | + HOLT | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Stayton Public Library | JF HOLT | Searching... Unknown |
Bound With These Titles
On Order
Summary
Summary
Set against a backdrop of a small town in Texas in 1968, Kimberly Willis Holt's fourth novel brims with quirky Southern characters and the wisdom and humor that are her trademarks. When Gandpap dies and leaves his house to the Pickens family, 11-year-old Janelle learns a secret that changes the way she will look at poverty forever.
Author Notes
Kimberly Willis Holt was born in Pensacola, Florida September 9, 1960, but spent most of her childhood in Forest Hill, Louisiana.
Kimberly is a children's writer, most famous for writing When Zachary Beaver Came to Town, which won the National Book Award for Young People's Literature in 1999.
She has also won, or been shortlisted, for a number of prestigious awards: Mister and Me, My Louisiana Sky, Dancing in Cadillac Light, Keeper of the Night, Waiting for Gregory, Part of Me, Skinny Brown Dog, Piper Reed Navy Brat, Piper Reed the Great Gypsy, and Piper Reed Gets a Job.
Kimberly lives in Amarillo, Texas.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (5)
School Library Journal Review
Gr 5-8-Eleven-year-old Jaynell Lambert often slips into the junkyard beside her house and sits behind the wheel of a salvaged car, "driving" herself wherever her imagination will take her. It is the summer of 1968 in a desolate Texas town, and her recently widowed grandfather has left his homestead to move into the Lambert house, where his increasingly bizarre behavior convinces Jaynell's parents that he is becoming senile. With Jaynell in tow, Grandpap makes daily treks to the cemetery to talk to the headstones of Moon's departed citizens, and he impulsively buys a gaudy emerald green Cadillac convertible that he allows his granddaughter to drive in open fields. Even though she empathizes with her grandfather's loneliness and his quirky methods of coping with it, the child is aghast when he gives away his own unoccupied homestead to the town's dirt-poor social outcasts. After his sudden death, her family contrives to reclaim the property that they feel is rightfully their own, and Jaynell learns sobering lessons about the dark side of human nature yet at the same time discovers honesty, courage, and kindness in unlikely places. This nostalgic parable about loss and redemption is at once gritty and poetic, stark and sentimental, howlingly funny and depressingly sad, but it is a solid page-turner. Holt once again displays her remarkable gift for creating endearingly eccentric characters as well as witty dialogue rich in dialect and idiom.-William McLoughlin, Brookside School, Worthington, OH (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Publisher's Weekly Review
Constructed like a series of vignettes, this novel focuses on the relationship between a child and her widower grandfather, whom the family suspects is losing his grip on reality. In PW's words, the novel "captures a child's sense that time stretches endlessly before her." Ages 10-up. (Nov.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Horn Book Review
(Intermediate, Middle School) Knowing that Grandpap calls eleven-year-old Jaynell ""Raccoon Gal"" because she used to wear a Daniel Boone hat and that Daddy calls her ""boy"" because she was the closest he'd get to a son tells us much about this straight-shooting Southern narrator. With a deft hand at small-town characterization, Holt brings to Moon, Texas, a wonderful cast to augment Jaynell's full-blown personality. After losing his wife and leaving his homeplace to move in with Jaynell's family, Grandpap does two things to make his family nervous: he purchases an emerald green 1962 Cadillac convertible and allows the ""white trash"" Pickenses to move into his empty house. The plot centers on these two events and their repercussions on the town, which is just getting its roads blacktopped the same year men will be walking on the moon. Jaynell, who used to spend her hours sitting behind the wheel of the junked cars at Clifton Bailey's Automobile and Salvage Parts, now rides behind the wheel of Grandpap's Cadillac (""I was born to drive"") while her sister Racine dances in the headlights (""Racine Lambert was born to be a star""). Into the lives of these distinct personalities, Holt introduces the secret of Grandpap's past, the truth of which becomes especially important when he dies of a heart attack while driving, leaving both his Cadillac and his homeplace as legacies. In sorting out who gets what, Holt finds a believable way for feisty Jaynell and her family to ""soar to the moon."" (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted. All rights reserved.
Kirkus Review
Moon, Texas, in 1968: the year that 11-year-old Jaynells widowed Grandpap moves in. Fearing that he is becoming senile, Jaynell is instructed to keep an eye on Grandpap at all times. She does so with pleasure because it represents both a thrilling invitation to spy and an opportunity to be with her beloved grandfather. Before Grandpap dies (midway through the book), he buys a 62 Cadillac and teaches Jaynell the rudiments of driving. He also gives his own home to the destitute Pickens family whose father, not unlike Grandpap, is overcoming alcoholism. The setup proceeds at a pace as leisurely as Grandpaps rounds in his Cadillac, meandering gently through issues of gender, class, alcoholism, and family secrets. Subtle narrative tension threads through the storys second half as Jaynells family argues over Grandpaps estate. Jaynell, the only one who knows that Grandpap intended the Pickens family to have his home, resents the loss of the homeplace. Bitterness prevents Jaynell from revealing Grandpaps intentions when the relatives talk about evicting the Pickenses; a tragedy forces her to reveal the truth. This is bustlingly peopled with colorful, often funny characters. Not all are as interestingly complex as Jaynells quiet mother who is coping with her husbands 60s-era paternalism and her familys greed in a tentative but definite way. As always, the author has a reliable grasp on time and place. If the thematic connections are sometimes tenuous, to Holts credit the few highly dramatic incidents are not used to manipulate either plot or readers. While this is inherently nostalgic and tenderhearted, it never becomes maudlin and it will be welcomed by fans of Holts 1999 National Book Awardwinning When Zachary Beaver Came to Town. (Fiction. 9-12)
Booklist Review
Gr. 5^-7. In Holt's National Book Award winner, When Zachary Beaver Came to Town (1999), and in My Louisiana Sky (1998), both Booklist Editors' Choices, the southern small-town settings were an integral part of the story, and the particulars were spare and telling. Here the authentic local color about Moon, Texas, in 1968 sometimes takes over the story, and there are just too many town characters to visit. At 11, Jaynell is a tomboy (Daddy calls her "boy" ). Unlike her ultrafeminine sister, she loves to hunt, practice driving, and watch the preparations for the first trip to the moon. She watches over Grandpap as he visits his wife's grave, wanders around town, and buys a Cadillac for cash. Why does he help a "white-trash" family move into his old home? Jaynell's first-person narrative is strong and tender. It's her story and the discovery of a wounding family secret that keeps you reading. --Hazel Rochman
Table of Contents
| Chapter 1 Driving My Troubles Away |
| Grandpap came to live with us the day after the highway men arrived to blacktop our road. It was July-hot as cinders. Uncle Floyd called July "Wet Dog Days" because all month long the air smelled like a stinky mutt caught in the rain. But that day not even the heat could keep me cooped up inside like a setting hen. I wasn't about to miss the excitement. We lived on one of the last dirt roads in Moon, Texas. The only blacktop roads in Moon stretched in front of the rich folks' homes, leaving us to live with the dust and potholes |
| All my life I'd heard Daddy say, "Those Dyers always thought they were better than us 'cause they lived on a blacktop road." The Dyers got everything first in Moon-a color TV, a private phone line, a brand-new Cadillac. I thought the gravel truck making its way down Cypress Road would transform our lives into something grand |
| Before Momma ordered me to do the breakfast dishes with my sister, Racine, I escaped next door and hopped inside one of Mr. Bailey's cars to wait for the gravel truck. Clifton Bailey's Automobile Salvage and Parts was the most amazing place in Moon. Junk cars were parked in his yard, and piles of rusty parts and patched tires were scattered about like lost treasure |
| Two years ago I took to sneaking over to Clifton Bailey's and slipping into one of his junkers. The whole while, I tried to keep a lookout for Mr. Bailey, but one day he caught me red-handed. He narrowed his crossed eyes and frowned while I sat there with my hands stuck to the steering wheel |
| Finally he laughed. "Jaynell, anytime you take a notion, you just pick out a car and drive your heart away." And I did. I drove everywhere, covering miles and miles, even though none of the cars actually ran. Usually I drove when I felt so full I couldn't hold my feelings inside me without popping a vein. Like when Racine made me mad enough to commit bloody murder, or when Grandma died and I was determined not to shed one tear, or when the newsman talked about how one day soon a man would walk on the moon. Just the thought of that made me feel like I could bust |
| Leaning back against the seat, eyes closed, chin up, hands wrapped around the steering wheel, I moved beyond the dirt roads, away from Moon, into Marshall to rescue Grandpap from Aunt Loveda's. We'd head down to Highway 80, which stretched across Texas, and we'd be riding in a big fancy car, the kind that made people sit up and take notice, like the Dyers' Cadillac. After our trip, we'd return to Grandpap's homeplace |
| I hadn't been to the homeplace since Grandma died, and I missed it something fierce. The homeplace was just a little house on two tiny acres, but I loved everything inside and out. The tree house in the tall oak tree that I used to pretend was a rocket, the corner bookshelf in the living room with Grandpap's Louis L'Amour and Zane Grey westerns, the smell of coffee brewing on the stove and Hungry Jack biscuits baking in the oven. Grandma always joked, "Ain't no use making them from scratch when they're twice as good coming from a can." She'd serve them with real butter and a spoon of Blackburn's strawberry preserves. Sometimes when she was in a homemade baking mood, she'd make M&M brownies |
| Last month after Grandma died, Grandpap sat around his house in his underwear and wouldn't eat. He didn't speak to anybody, not even me. That's when Aunt Loveda and Uncle Floyd took Grandpap from his homeplace on the outskirts of Moon to live with them in their brand-new four-bedroom ranch house in Marshall. Aunt Loveda said her brick home had a lot of room to move around in, which was a good thing because every one of those Thigpens was round, round, round. Especially cousins Sweet Adeline and Little Floyd, who was only named that on account of his daddy, Big Floyd |
| I felt like they had yanked Grandpap from my world. I was Grandpap's favorite. He called me Raccoon Gal because when I was little I wore a Daniel Boone hat with a raccoon's tail. Before Grandma died, me and Grandpap spent a lot of time together. He took me fishing with him in his canoe, Little Mamma Jamma, and showed me all the spots on Caddo Lake. I knew where to find Devil's Elbow, Old Folks Playground and Hamburger Point. Me and Grandpap had spied on alligators, watched turtles sunbathe and found our way back by studying the way moss grew on the cypress trees. Just as I pressed the accelerator to the floor, I heard Momma holler, "Jaynell, get in this house and help Racine with the dishes!" How would I ever see the world with a sink of sudsy water always waiting for me? |