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Item Barcode | Collection | Call Number | Status | Item Holds |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 33607003415299 | Juvenile Fiction | FOXLEE | Searching... Unknown | Searching... Unavailable |
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Summary
Summary
Lenny Spink is the sister of a giant. Her little brother Davey won't stop growing - and at seven is as tall as a man. When they receive their monthly instalment of 'Burrell's Build-It-at-Home Encyclopedia' set, fun and excitement burst into Lenny and Davey's lives. The amazing, mysterious entries in the book's pages give them a way to dream of escape: Lenny vows to become a beetle expert, while Davey decides he will run away to Canada and build a log cabin. But as Davey's disease progresses, the siblings' richly imagined world becomes harder to cling to in this deeply moving and original novel about grief, family, and wonder.
Author Notes
Karen Foxlee was born in Mount Isa, Queensland, Australia on February 3, 1971. Before becoming an author, she worked as a registered nurse. She received a Bachelor of Arts degree in creative writing from the University of the Sunshine Coast. Her first novel, The Anatomy of Wings, was published in 2007. It won the Emerging Author Award at the 2006 Queensland Premier's Literary Award, The Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best First Book South East Asia Pacific Region, and The Dobbie Award. Her other works include The Midnight Dress. Her title Ophelia and the Marvellous Boy made the finalist list for the Aurealis Awards in 2014. This title also made the Readings Children's Book Prize 2015 shortlist. She wrote the middle-grade novel, A Most Magical Girl, which won the 2017 Readings Children's Book Prize. Her most recent novel is Lenny's Book of Everything (2018). It won a 2019 Indie Book Award in the Children's category.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (2)
School Library Journal Review
Gr 4-7-Set in Ohio from 1969 to 1977, this novel tells the story of Lenny Spink's family and community, including her mother Cindy, her absentee father, her maternal grandmother Nanny Flora, and her brother Davey, who has a form of gigantism. While Cindy works two jobs to cover necessities, Lenny attends school and Davey stays with Mrs. Gaspar, a Hungarian neighbor who has magical dreams. Lenny and David spend hours poring over an encyclopedia set, dreaming of becoming beetle experts and traveling to Canada, respectively. When Davey starts to experience growing pains, the school nurse encourages Cindy to get a second opinion despite the expense. During Davey's testing and treatment for gigantism, the community unites around him. However, much in Lenny's life remains confusing. She struggles with feeling ashamed of Davey and adrift when he and her mother travel for treatments. Lenny secretly tries to uncover family connections that would lead to her father. Eventually, Lenny learns that people are not always what they look or claim to be. Foxlee's latest is a story of learning how to explore the world with limited resources, the grey areas of human morality, the family that one creates, and grief. Although the struggles that the Spink family faces are often practical in nature, Foxlee's writing is infused with a hint of magic, just as the animals and places that Lenny and Davey read about fill their lives with curiosity and joy. VERDICT This is a well-paced story about perceptions versus reality, and although many readers may deduce the story's end early on, the fully-fledged characters and poignant handling of grief make this a general purchase for most collections.-Liz Anderson, DC Public Library © Copyright 2019. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Publisher's Weekly Review
Curious, practical narrator Lenny Spink lives in a small apartment in an Ohio suburb with her lovable younger brother, Davey, who can't seem to stop growing, and their single mother, who frets endlessly about his ever-increasing size and how she will afford clothes that fit him. With their father MIA and the smarmy Mr. King worming his way into their mother's life, Lenny and Davey find joy and inspiration in the weekly arrival of new sections for the build-it-at-home encyclopedia set they've won. But even as they dream of exploring the world pictured in those colorful pages, it becomes increasingly clear that Davey's puzzling growth spurts may be dangerous. Though Davey's character at times lacks depth and some may be bothered by the illness-as-literary-construct, Foxlee (A Most Magical Girl) surrounds him with characters who are as endearing as they are flawed: the fiercely protective Lenny, whose sharp tongue belies her longing for stable relationships, and Mrs. Gaspar, their meddlesome but doting neighbor. Themes of family and forgiveness are front and center, but the heart of this story-and the magic of it-is the devotion of these two siblings who together navigate the harsh realities of life and loss. Ages 8-12. Agent: Catherine Drayton, InkWell Management. (Apr.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Excerpts
Excerpts
7 pounds 3 ounces * 20 inches * July 1969 Our mother had a dark heart feeling. It was as big as the sky kept inside a thimble. That's how dark heart feelings are. They have great volume but can hide in small places. You can swallow them with a blink and carry them inside you so no one will know. "Something's not right," she said when she brought baby Davey home from the hospital. She rubbed her fingers over her chest and looked at him sleeping in the crook of her arm. "I have a feeling," she said. She was good at knowing the wrongness of things, sadnesses and sicknesses, and in the park, she could always find the pigeon with one leg. She knew when Mrs. Gaspar was coming down with a wheeze before she wheezed. She knew my thin hair was caused by some undiagnosed malady. Some days were more wrong than others. Whole days. From the moment she opened her eyes, "Something's not right," she said. "Does it hurt?" I asked her. I looked at my new baby brother and he was perfect as a walnut in its shell. "No, it doesn't hurt," she said, and she took my three-year-old hand and put it to her heart. I could feel her ribs through her nightdress. "It's not a hurting kind of feeling. Just a something-will-happen feeling." "A good thing or a bad thing?" I asked. "It might be good or bad or somewhere in between," she said. "We'll have to wait and see." Davey was born six days after Neil Armstrong took his famous step and everyone was still crazy with moon-walk fever. Mother liked to tell the story if she was in a lying-on-the-sofa mood. An untying-her-hair mood. A tickle-my-feet-and-I'll-tell-you mood. We knew all her stories by heart, word for word, so that we could have told them ourselves if we needed to. The story of the day her father died from a heart attack after blowing out his birthday candles. The story of her friend, Louis Martin, who was struck by lightning when he walked home from school in the rain. The story of the river and how she nearly drowned in it when she was seven, of the first dress she ever made, which her mother forbade her to wear because it was cherry red. The tale of the UFO she saw beside the highway when she ran away with Peter Lenard Spink. "It was a perfect summer day when you were born" was always how the Davey story started. She must have noticed all the perfectness from the bus window because she couldn't afford the cab fare: Second Street glinting and shimmering in the heat, ponderous summer clouds sweeping their shadows over the sun-baking cars, marigolds growing in the park, children eating ice cream. I was left behind with Mrs. Gaspar in number seventeen. She had two Pomeranians with marmalade-colored coats named Karl and Karla. The apartment smelled of them, and also ashtrays filled with white cigarette filters, each decorated with a ring of peach lipstick. Her apartment was a kaleidoscope of tan crocheted doilies and pumpkin-colored throw rugs, and even Mrs. Gaspar's orange beehive, which sat a little askew on her head, matched the decor. Her hand-knitted clothes were unraveling and her pom-pom slippers had the disheveled look of something she had fished out of a trash can. She liked to bless me when my mother wasn't looking. She drew crosses on my tiny forehead and whispered in Hungarian. "Yes, it was a perfect summer day," said Mother. "And I knew you were coming. I knew it and I hadn't had a single contraction. Not one. But something told me I had to go to the hospital. Something said, Cynthia Spink, get to that hospital this instant." "What was the something?" I asked. "Hush, now," she said. But I wanted to know. She was thin with worrying, our mother. She combed out her long fair hair with her fingers, closed her eyes. She was made almost entirely out of worries and magic. "Was it a voice?" If it was a voice, it would sound like dry leaves. "I said hush, Lenny, it's my story. I took you across the hall to Mrs. Gaspar's and then I caught the number twenty-four. The voice said, Get on that number twenty-four, Cynthia, because it doesn't do the loop to Safeway. It goes all the way down Second with only five stops." I tried to imagine a voice like whispering leaves saying all that. I rolled my eyes at Davey but he ignored me because he loved his sudden-arrival story. "You were a week late already. I sweated on that bus. I must have sweated a gallon. Then I stepped off that bus, down onto the sidewalk near that hospital, and wouldn't you know it, I get a contraction that bends me in half and then another one just a minute later. And I get two more and I haven't even made it to the hospital front door, Davey. And there were people running from everywhere but I had you right there on the doorstep with everyone walking past." "Holy Batman," said Davey. But it wasn't like we hadn't heard the story before. He knew there was more to come. "But the thing was," she said, "when you were born, they told me you had a true knot in your cord. A true knot, pulled tight, and that's why you came out so quick, because my body and your body knew you'd run out of air and blood if you didn't." Air and blood. I always repeated that part in my head. Air and blood. "Gee," said Davey. "You almost might have never been," said Mother. "I'm glad you got the number twenty-four," said Davey. "You were a beautiful baby," said Mother. "Was I?" asked Davey. "So beautiful," said Mother. But she didn't mention the dark heart feeling to him, not ever, not once. That was always our secret. That was never in the story. She never told him how she asked Dr. Leopold if everything was fine. "Why, he's a perfect bouncing baby boy," said Dr. Leopold. "Are you sure?" "Why, he's perfectly normal," said Dr. Leopold on the perfect summer day. So she smiled and agreed. "Father's name?" the doctor asked. He was filling out the birth certificate. "Peter Lenard Spink," said Mother. "L-e-n-a-r-d." "Will Mr. Spink be in tomorrow to see his boy?" asked the doctor. "Yes," said Mother. "Yes, he will be." Excerpted from Lenny's Book of Everything by Karen Foxlee All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.