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Summary: quirky fun memoir of growing up in town of 300 people
Review: Zippy is the nickname of a girl who grows up in a very small town in the Midwest, and it's as if she grows up in a different historical era. The book is light, and there are touching scenes, and it ends on a moving note. I don't often read memoirs of young girls growing up, but I was drawn to the book, and I can heartily recommend it as a sweet diversion from whatever your main diet is. Not that there's anything wrong with heavy confession, but it's nice, too, to have a more delicate repast upon occasion.
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Summary: Laugh out loud funny
Review: I loved it! It reminded me of David Sedaris. The author's use of language makes it feel like you are listening to her tell you a story. There were lots of times that I had to stop and read things out loud to the other people in the room because they amused me so much. It made me remember living in a small town - both the good and the bad. It is a great read.
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Summary: Zippy is a "must read" for women in the Heartland
Review: Haven Kimmel has somehow remembered the small details of growing up in Indiana that had long ago faded from my memory. I laughed out loud more than once, what a funny, wonderful read!!! My sisters are reading it now and also loving it. I especially love the finale Christmas in the book. Through the Christmas story, the true nature of midwestern life and values are spoken. Thank you, Haven ... and your sister was wrong. I chose your book even though there were many other non-pork related books on the shelf!!!
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Summary: Great fun
Review: This book was well-written and funny. Kimmel's recall of her childhood adventures was impressive.
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Summary: THIS BOOK'S GREAT; SHAME ON YOU, CINDY SUMMERS
Review: I started reading this book 9/2/01 and after I read the first chapter I thought to myself, "This is really funny; I must read this out loud to my wife"...which I did. Each reading session resulted in joy and a lot of laughter. 'Tis incomprehensible to me for anyone to rate a 1-star and a great dis-service to the author. Boy, I hope she continues writing about her life and she knows how to put a life together. Strike that. She knows how to put a book together; her life gets jumbled at times just like everyone else.Haven Kimmel states what age she is every once in awhile (activity stretches from about age 4 to 9)and relates a wonderful story of her outlook on life in general and talks about many, many incidents that are very interesting. Boy, how can you remember in such detail? If you like to laugh...out loud...get this book!
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Summary: A GIRL NAMED ZIPPY-GROWING UP SMALL IN INDIANA
Review: LOVED THIS BOOK! SAW MANY PARALLELS OF MY OWN LIFE "GROWING UP SMALL IN SMALL TOWNS". HONEST, UPLIFTING AND ENTERTAINING! SOUR GRAPES TO CINDY SUMMERS OF INDIANA. I THOUGHT THE BOOK FLOWED VERY WELL AND LOOK FORWARD TO A SEQUEL.
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Summary: Wonderful!
Review: What a wonderful book! If you were born anywhere in the 50's or 60's, you will surely relate to this book! You don't have to be from a small town to enjoy it, either. I laughed out loud at many of Little Jarvis' escapades! I truly loved this book and look forward to Ms Kimmel's next one. I'm so glad I just "happened upon it" and bought it!
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Summary: Disorganized memoirs
Review: I found this book very disjointed and unconnected. It is hard to determine how old Zippy is in any given chapter. Chapters do not flow. There are no transitions. I also thought the author told tales that are probably embarrassing to the families involved. These are real people and some she considered her best friends. I am glad I was not a friend of Haven (Betsy) Kimmel in Mooreland, In.
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Summary: ordinary small-town life is extraordinary in Zippy's hands
Review: Fasten your seat belts and prepare yourself for Haven Kimmel's lovely, witty and uproarious memoir, "A Girl Named Zippy." Written through her childhood eyes, "Zippy" recounts, with uncanny vision and sidesplitting humor, the early childhood of the author in Mooreland, Indiana. As the author herself admits, recounting growing up in her tiny (population 300) home town from 1965-1980 posed a most unusual task. "The distance between Mooreland in 1965 and a city like San Francisco in 1965 is roughly equivalent to the distance starlight must travel before we look up casually from a cornfield and see it." Her sister, Melinda, commented that nobody had written a book about Mooreland "because no one sane would be interested in reading it." Yet, Haven "Zippy" Jarvis' childhood - one which featured her travelling to hospital emergency rooms so frequently that the nurses knew her by name, one in which she was endlessly fascinated with the skin tone of senior citizens, one in which each citizen of the community contains some quality which transforms the curious, rambunctious and irrepressible child -- utterly absorbs the reader. This charming book will gain an enormous popularity precisely because it drives to the heart of what it means to be a child. Not only does the author recount anecdotes with a voice straight from childhood in America's heartland, Kimmel permits Zippy to describe her own development with uncanny, wry detachment. We learn how Haven, as a baby, did not speak a word until nearly her third birthday, and when she determined to do so, it was to make a bet with her father. Her self-portrait of her infancy still tickles me: "I was bald until I was nearly three. My head was also strangely crooked...Also my eyes were excessively large and decidedly close together. When my mother first saw me in the hospital she looked up with tears in her eyes and said to my father, 'I'll love her and protect her anyway.'" Family and community members of Mooreland are deliciously portrayed. The overweight Debbie, mother of a friend, "was in the kitchen frying dinner. Dinner at the Newmans' always, always involved the Fry Daddy...The food groups as represented by Debbie were: Fried, Meat, Bread, Coke, and Ice Cream. She was an excellent cook." Her brother, Daniel, of "ramrod-stiff" posture and attitude, refuses to read until a sympathetic high-school teacher suggests he do so; when he recounts the evening's television shows from the "TV Guide," his tearful mother inquires as to how he has learned. Danny responds, "Mr. McCutcheon said school would be easier if I learned to read...So I just went ahead and did that." Melinda, Zippy's practical, sensitive older sister, is particularly well-drawn. An especailly evocative episode involves Zippy's introduction to birth defects. After Zippy observes a severely deformed child, she verbally pesters her older sister "Lindy? What was wrong with that girl?". Melinda, "reached out for my hand, quick to anger and quick to forgive," and told Zip that the child was born deformed. Stunned and atypically quiet, Zippy ponders both that reality and the wonder of her older sister; "it was as if Melinda had both answered my question and refused to answer it. She looked down at me...a still kind of look, like the moment when a seesaw is perfectly straight." Her mother, Delonda is a voracious reader and content to allow normal househood chores to finish in second place to her appetite for science fiction. Yet, when Zippy comes to believe that she was adopted (thinking her real parents were gypsies and that she was born with a tail), her mother tells her she was actually traded for a bottomless green velvet bag, one so special it lacked a bottom. Zippy delights in thinking that the gypsies lost out on the deal, but her mother steers her gently in the direction of acceptance and understanding when Delonda comments that the bag "looked just like a normal bag, except that you could just keep putting stuff in it. It was like the human heart, sweetie: there was no end to what it could hold." Zippy's heart truly belongs to her father, Bob Jarvis, agnostic free-thinker, perpetual gambler and occasional dispenser of wisdom. Delighted with his scab-ridden, tomboyish daughter, Bob threatens to hold Zippy upside down and "spit on her butt" if she turns out like Melinda. The Jordans emerge as a coherent, vibrant family, materially poor but rich in the best and most important ways imaginable. When you read "A Girl Named Zippy," you will learn about a woman who appears to be about "164 years old" whose skin, "impatient for her to get it over with and die, appeared to be sliding down off her body into a pool around her ankles." You will also learn why it is all right to love a chicken; after all, "I've seen women passionately devoted to men who couldn't pile bricks...not to mention all those people who curl up at night with dogs that have gunk running out of their eyes, dogs who earlier peed where they were about to walk and spent ten minutes licking their own wormy butts." Written by a gifted author who truly understands the power of voice, who mixes humorous observations with genuine respect and love for the human condition and who knows how rejoicing in childhood can liberate adult life, "A Girl Named Zippy" will become a national treasure.
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Summary: Unique, Touching & Hilarious
Review: The true genius of this book is the combination of honor, honesty and humor. Kimmel shares her memories with an unlikely combination of warmth and sarcasm. Each person is shown to be a clown and a hero simultaneously, the author most of all.
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