Horn Book Review
Ten-year-old Flora Belle Buckman's life changes when she resuscitates a squirrel after his near-death experience with her neighbor's Ulysses 2000X vacuum. Flora discovers that the incident has caused the squirrel, whom she also names Ulysses, to acquire superpowers. Despite being a "natural-born cynic," Flora's lively imagination and love of comics such as The Illuminated Adventures of the Amazing Incandesto! help her believe that Ulysses is bound for superhero greatness. There's only one problem: Ulysses's archnemesis, Flora's self-absorbed, romance novel-writing, squirrel-hating mother. Beneath the basic superhero-squirrel-friend plot, DiCamillo imbues this novel with emotion by focusing on larger life issues such as loss and abandonment, acceptance of difference, loneliness, love, overcoming fears, and the complexity of relationships. She also adds plenty of warmth and humor throughout: Flora enjoys using catch phrases and big words ("holy bagumba!"; malfeasance; capacious); Ulysses loves to eat. . .just about anything; and there is a quirky supporting cast, including Flora's absent-minded father, her eleven-year-old neighbor William Spiver, and his great-aunt, Tootie Tickham. Campbell's full-page and spot pencil illustrations accentuate the mood, while interspersed comic-book pages "illuminate" Ulysses's superhero adventures and serve as a nice visual complement to Flora's love of comics. This little girl and squirrel and their heartwarming tale could melt even the most hardened archnemesis's heart. cynthia k. ritter (c) Copyright 2013. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
When a cynical comic-book fanatic discovers her own superhero, life becomes wonderfully supercharged. Despite the contract her mother made her sign to "turn her face away from the idiotic high jinks of comics," 10-year-old Flora avidly follows her favorite superhero's adventures. Flora's mother writes romance novels and seems more in love with her books than with her lonely ex-husband or equally lonely daughter. When a neighbor accidentally vacuums a squirrel into a Ulysses 2000X vacuum cleaner, Flora resuscitates him into a "changed squirrel," able to lift the 2000X with a single paw. Immediately assuming he's a superhero, Flora names the squirrel "Ulysses" and believes together they will "[shed] light into the darkest corners of the universe." Able to understand Flora, type, compose poetry and fly, the transformed Ulysses indeed exhibits superpowers, but he confronts his "arch-nemesis" when Flora's mother tries to terminate him, triggering a chain of events where Ulysses becomes a real superhero. The very witty text and droll, comic-bookstyle black-and-white illustrations perfectly relay the all-too-hilarious adventures of Flora, Ulysses and a cast of eccentric characters who learn to believe in the impossible and have "capacious" hearts. Original, touching and oh-so-funny tale starring an endearingly implausible superhero and a not-so-cynical girl. (Fantasy. 8-12)]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
New York Review of Books Review
when i meet a new character in a children's book, I often ask myself: Is this a child I would want to drive to a birthday party? The answer is most often a resounding no. Then along came Flora Belle Buckman, the 10-year-old star of Kate DiCamillo's madcap chapter book, "Flora and Ulysses." Unlike some of her freshas-paint fictional counterparts, Flora has gravitas. She is a self-proclaimed "natural-born cynic" with a misanthropic streak reminiscent of Harriet the Spy. She's not a grouch exactly, but she is world-weary, perhaps as a result of her parents' recent divorce. Like many a cynic, Flora is skeptical of love; but she has a passion for words, particularly those that appear inside thought bubbles. Conveniently, her mother, Phyllis, a romance novelist, is so distracted that Flora has plenty of time to immerse herself in what Phyllis refers to as "the idiotic high jinks of comics." Flora's favorites are "The Illuminated Adventures of the Amazing Incandesto!" and its companion, "Terrible Things Can Happen to You!" She lives by advice gleaned from their pages. Her mantra: "Do not hope; instead, observe." One day, while she's lost in her comic book universe - cheerfully illuminated by K.G. Campbell - Flora witnesses an amazing thing. Her neighbor, Tootie Tickham, is pulled into the yard by the power of her birthday present, a Ulysses SuperSuction, Multi-Terrain 2000X vacuum cleaner. In an uproarious mash-up, the appliance-gone-wrong ingests a squirrel, which it quickly regurgitates, minus some fur but empowered with the gift of thought and super-squirrel strength. "Holy bagumba," Flora says. Truer words have never been spoken. "Flora and Ulysses" alternates between Flora's perspective and the squirrel's, which is infused with Zen philosophy à la rodent. One snapshot: "His brain felt larger, roomier. It was as if several doors in the dark room of his self (doors he hadn't even known existed) had suddenly been flung wide. Everything was shot through with meaning, purpose, light." Flora names the squirrel Ulysses and smuggles him into her house, attracting nary a glance from her inattentive mother. Flora, caught in the purgatory of tweenhood, missing her father and fed up with her mother's nagging, finds Ulysses to be the perfect companion. He's adorable and unthreatening, and other than tapping out cryptic messages and poems on Phyllis's electric typewriter, he keeps his deep thoughts to himself. The two embark on a series of adventures together - none of them earthshatteringly exciting, but each distinguished by an emotional depth that is appropriately Joycean (and, fear not, appropriate for kids). Flora and her squirrel mostly stick close to home, where they team up with William Spiver, Tootie Tickham's blind nephew, to protect Ulysses from the now cognizant adults who want to return him to the wild. Flora is certain that Ulysses is a superhero; William is harder to convince. The tension mounts when Flora's father, George, comes to pick her up for a visit. Phyllis dispatches the pair with explicit instructions for George to put Ulysses in a sack and hit him over the head with a shovel. But first they stop at Giant Do-Nut, where the squirrel takes a flying leap out of his shoe box and into a waitress's hair. Despite the stress of not knowing whether Ulysses will outwit his arch-nemesis, Phyllis, it is fascinating to have a squirrel's eye view on the world, especially when the squirrel is a poet at heart. The smells! The doughnut selection! The wonderful imagery of sunny side up eggs ! Occasionally, reading "Flora and Ulysses" gives you that whiplash feeling of watching TV with someone who changes the channel every two seconds. The chapters are short and choppy and the antics so off-the-wall, parents looking for a peaceful bedtime story to read aloud may be surprised by how riled up young listeners get. But isn't that the fun of DiCamillo's books? In "Flora and Ulysses," longtime fans will find a happy marriage of Mercy Watson's warmth and wackiness and Edward Tulane's gentle life lessons. In Flora, they will find a girl worth knowing, and one they will remember. She is welcome in my minivan anytime. ? ELISABETH EGAN is the books editor at Glamour.
