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Summary: A Girl Named Zippy: Growing Up Small in Mooreland Indiana
Review: I was skeptical before I started reading this one, but halfway through the first chapter, I was convinced that I would enjoy the rest of it... and I did! The style of telling the story from a child's perspective while being written for adults is interesting. I can readily identify with it also because I know that many of my childhood memories are not necessarily true to life facts, but the way I remember them. So thats the way it is and it makes some of the recollections all the more personal and appealing.
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Summary: A Purely Delightful Read!
Review: I loved this book so much. While she grew up a little later than I did, the book brought back many memories of my own childhood in several small towns in Pennsylvania. The writing is so fantastic. This is a book you just fall into and cannot put down -- at the same time knowing you are reading too fast and don't want the book to end. I was so sad when I finished it. I hope there is a sequel.
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Summary: A Girl Named Zippy
Review: Though A Girl Named Zippy is a memoir, it reads like a funny & charming book of fiction. Set in Mooreland, Indiana, we get to see what small town life is like for Zippy during her childhood years. The book is full of laugh out loud moments, with Zippy and her crazy antics. At times I thought that Zippy seemed a real life version of Ramona Quimby, the star of Beverly Cleary's beloved childrens books.A few have critiqued the cover of the book, but I thought it was cute, and I loved that each chapter started with an old family photo. Some have criticized the book for having issues with the family...like their dirty house, gambling dad, having a gun in the house, or her lack of desire to go to church, but Kimmel has done a great job of focusing on the good in both her family and her life, and finding a way to see humor in some of the not so good. I really appreciated her perspective and that she shared her childhood memories with us in such a funny & delightful way. I also adored the ending of the book, if you like feeling good about life, read this~
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Summary: Absolutely Unfair!!
Review: It is absolutely unfair that someone could produce such a gem the first time out of the gate. Haven Kimmel has written a marvelous memoir that had me laughing almost immediately. We all have stories about our childhood that have become family folklore and Ms. Kimmel has done a beautiful job of putting all of hers in one book. There were many times when I had to re-read a certain sentence or phrase to make sure it really was as funny as I thought it was the first time. Everyone in this book, from her family (including two much older siblings who tortured her mercilessly) to the crazy neighbor who allegedly tried to smother her in her crib, is colorful and truly believable because we all probably know someone just like them. One of my favorite stories involves Haven's dad (who drinks on the job and carries a gun every day) when he got even with the neighbor who complained to him about his barking dogs by getting friends and strangers to bring their dogs in cages to his yard and then proceeded to put a caged raccoon in front of the dog cages. Needless to say, thirty dogs barking all night proved his point. Ms. Kimmel is obviously bright as well as observant. She is also incredibly sassy which makes this an even enjoyable read. I will be recommending this one to my friends.
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Summary: One of the best books I've read this year!
Review: Although I grew up in a few slightly larger Indiana towns a couple of years earlier than Haven Kimmel, I spent time visiting my maternal grandmother in McCordsville, IN - a town only slightly larger than Mooreland. There my sister and I had adventures not unlike Zippy's. Her child's voice was eerily familiar to me and many times the book had me laughing out loud (not unlike Jean Shepard's memoir "In God we Trust, All Others Pay Cash"). Other times, as with the death of an elderly town resident who had given her a quarter, my eyes filled with tears as I remembered my grandma's friends who have passed away. I couldn't put this book down and found the last chapter so very touching - it was like reliving my own childhood Christmases. The pictures even seemed familiar to me - I guess our dads all had the same haircut in the 60's and 70's. I highly recommend this book to everyone and have a list of folks who are waiting to borrow mine.
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Summary: Fabulous writing about small town life
Review: If you like Garrison Keillor, Tom Bodett, Jon Hassler, Phillip Gulley, and Annette Smith, you'll absolutely LOVE Haven Kimmel. A brilliant look at a misfit childhood, growing up in a small town with a relgious mother, a shady father, an intriguing cast of characters, and a wry sense of humor. One of those books that you're sorry to see end. I've already bought a dozen copies for friends! Probably the best book I've read all year.
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Summary: A Girl Named Zippy
Review: Fresh and funny memoirs of a childhood in America's heartland, written by one who was born there in 1965 and can still remember the way a child experienced it. Kimmel, a former student of creative writing at Ball and North Carolina State Universities, has written about what she knows best-Zippy Jarvis and the little world she grew up in. The Jarvis family lived in Mooreland, Indiana, a town of 300 people, three churches, and one four-way intersection with stop signs. Just what they were doing there isn't clear, but the author's portraits of her hot-tempered, gambling father and her sedentary, depressive mother are vivid. While young Zippy did not see her parents' quirks as failings, the adult author makes their shortcomings abundantly clear. Through her eyes, the reader also meets the scary old woman who lives across the street and is believed to eat puppy stew; her friend Rose, remarkable for being not only left-handed but Catholic; the neighboring Hicks family with their eight children ("all excellent"), who leave their aged dog in Zippy's care; and her grandmother Mildred, whose house was once picked up by a tornado and moved twenty feet, landing on the family graveyard. All the ordinary stuff of childhood-building a bicycle with her father, throwing up in the local diner, fighting with schoolmates, going to Easter sunrise services with her mother-is recalled and told in the appealing voice of a scrappy, naïve kid. Each chapter begins with an appropriate photograph, usually a candid snapshot, but sometimes a school picture or a posed-for portrait, which serve to remind us that this is not fiction. However, Kimmel's narrative skills suggest a novel may be next. Not the weightiest of tomes, but quite delightful and very amusing.
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Summary: What a treasure!
Review: This is the kind of book that comes along once in a great many years. It's a splendid tale of life and wonderment, written by an author who has an extraordinary eye for the ordinary. I CANNOT WAIT for Haven Kimmel's next book!
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Summary: Read This Alone
Review: I made the mistake of reading most of this book on an airplane--my fits of laughter met with disapproving stares from the strangers seated around me. Kimmel's humor is sometimes obvious, sometimes subtle, but always apparent. Anyone who can make throwing up so funny that tears stream down your face is a truly gifted writer. I've read reviews that complain that it was far-fetched. Kimmel writes her memoires through the eyes of who she was as a child. This is part of what gives to book charm. It's far-fetched because a child's mind is rarely literal.
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Summary: My Hands Down Favorite Book of Last Year
Review: I have given this book to so many people, of all ages, and every single one has ended up laughing out loud, and going on about how much they loved it, and even up buying it for still others. It's a treasure, simple without being simplistic, funny and sweet without being sacchrine, true without being cruel. There are so many memoirs out there, but you should read this one, absolutely.
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