Description:
This hauntingly beautiful story is written in dialogue--a sort of play for the reader's mind's eye. As the curtain rises on the quiet drama, Courtney, 16, and Elva, 88, lie in adjacent beds in a nursing home where the TV hasn't worked for years. Courtney has a severed spinal cord and will never walk again. Her parents are dead, and she has been left here all alone, full of anger and bitterness. Elva, on the other hand, in spite of her advancing age and failing eyesight, is sustained by her memories of poetry, art, literature, and love. But her recitation of poems and references to great books and plays draw only sullen silence from Courtney. Eagerly, Elva entreats the young girl to pass the time by joining her on an imaginary trip to Italy, reading aloud from a 1910 Baedeker guide--a trip Elva had always promised her long-dead husband Emmett. At last, out of boredom, Courtney agrees, and the three of them begin by arriving on a steamship in the Bay of Naples. At first Courtney is resistant, and soon becomes actively destructive as she discovers the power she wields as imaginary tour guide. But gradually, in a bittersweet ending, Courtney succumbs to the liberating joys of letting the mind run free. Paul Fleischman has earned accolades for several other equally innovative works: the Newbery Medal for Joyful Noise, a Newbery Honor for Graven Images, the Scott O'Dell Award for Bull Run, and places on several honor lists for Whirligig. (Ages 11 and older) --Patty Campbell
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