Available:*
Library | Call Number | Status |
|---|---|---|
Searching... Dallas Public Library | + FICTION - SPALDING | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Newberg Public Library | J FICTION SPALDING | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Salem Main Library | J Spalding, E. | Searching... Unknown |
Bound With These Titles
On Order
Summary
Summary
Kim Fitzgerald-Trout took to driving with ease--as most children would if their parents would ever let them try. She had to. After all, she and her siblings live in a car.
Meet the Fitzgerald-Trouts, a band of four loosely related children living together in a lush tropical island. They take care of themselves. They sleep in their car, bathe in the ocean, eat fish they catch and fruit they pick, and can drive anywhere they need to go--to the school, the laundromat, or the drive-in. If they put their minds to it, the Fitzgerald-Trouts can do anything. Even, they hope, find a real home.
Award-winning poet and screenwriter Esta Spalding's exciting middle grade debut establishes a marvelous place where children fend for themselves, and adults only seem to ruin everything. This extraordinary world is brought to vibrant life by Sydney Smith, the celebrated artist behind Sidewalk Flowers .
Author Notes
Esta Spalding has lived in Hawaii, Toronto and Vancouver. Her collections of poetry include Carrying Place, Anchoress and Lost August. She is the co-author (with her mother, Linda Spalding) of a novel, Mere. Her latest collection of poems is The WifeÂs Account, which bears detailed witness to one year in the life of a marriage.
Her first book, Carrying Place, was nominated for the Gerald R. Lampert Award and her second, Anchoress, was a finalist for the Canadian Booksellers Association Libris Award for Best Specialty Book of the Year. Her third book, Lost August won the Pat Lowther Memorial Award. She is the editor of The Griffin Poetry Prize Anthology.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (6)
School Library Journal Review
Gr 4-6-Author and screenwriter Spalding ventures for the first time into middle grade literature with this tale of a hodgepodge family of kids (think the Boxcar Children) thrown together by a mix of DNA, circumstance, and absentee parents. The Fitzgerald-Trouts, led by oldest sibling Kim, start life with daily lists-at the top, finding a house. The siblings live in a car and occasionally get grocery and gas money from an assorted set of oddball parents (none of whom want to actually care for the kids full-time). Despite the sad circumstances, the kids are cheerful and the novel is amusing. Kim is warmhearted and motivated, and readers will root for the spunky youngsters. Upper-elementary and lower-middle school readers will relate to the kids' simple desires for a normal life, complete with goldfish in bowls and room to sleep. VERDICT Recommended for most middle grade collections, especially where light humor is needed.-Sarah Knutson, American Canyon Middle School, CA © Copyright 2016. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Publisher's Weekly Review
Technically, the Fitzgerald-Trout children are stepsiblings, but in this quirky series kickoff-a sort of modern-day answer to the Boxcar Children-family is family. Abandoned by their various parents, Kim, Kimo, Pippa, and Toby live in a parked car on an unnamed tropical island, a setting that comes alive with its lush beaches and to-be-avoided forest filled with poisonous iguanas. Their mothers-one a wildly vain country singer, the other a stockbroker "so greedy that she wore diamonds all over herself"-stop by occasionally to give the children (barely) enough money to get by. But they are outgrowing the car and need a more permanent home. The Fitzgerald-Trouts' struggle to find stability feels urgent throughout, but Spalding, a poet and screenwriter making her children's book debut, balances the direness of their situation with over-the-top characters and humor-driven narration. If the story's magic lies in its Dahl-esque approach to topics like homelessness and parental neglect, its heart lies in the relationship between these four mutually devoted children. Art not seen by PW. Ages 8-12. Author's agent: Jackie Kaiser, Westwood Creative Artists. Illustrator's agent: Emily van Beek, Folio Literary Management. (May) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Horn Book Review
Kim, a highly capable eleven-year-old, lives with her three younger siblings (and a goldfish) in a small green car. They attend school, do errands, play board games, drive to the laundromat, and have a huge amount of fun on their Hawaii-like island. Orphans? No, they actually have four (or possibly five) parents among them, but all the adults, including a criminal stockbroker and a country singer, are complete washouts. Whatever. That isn't a problem for this breezy, self-reliant bunch. The problem is that the kids are getting bigger and outgrowing their accommodation. They decide they need a proper house and put their combined ingenuity into the search. Overnighting in MARRA (read: IKEA) is fun, but temporary. Finally, Kim gets desperate and takes them all on a hair-raising car trip through the terrifying Sakahatchi Forest (with its attack iguanas) to the other side of the island, where they discover a new baby, important facts about aliens and the makeup of their family, a previously concealed first-person narrator, and their forever home. A touch of Everything on a Waffle (rev. 5/01) weirdness; a touch of The Willoughbys (rev. 3/08) sendup; and a warm, genial, wholly original voice. The use of blue type throughout is distracting, but the occasional illustrations by Smith (Sidewalk Flowers, rev. 5/15) enhance setting, character, and mood. sarah ellis(c) Copyright 2016. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
Four children of complicated parentage live in a car on a tropical island and hunt for a place to call home. Kim, the oldest at 11, and Kimo, Toby, and Pippa have lived in the car since Kim was in first grade. Dr. Fitzgerald, father of all but Kimo, moved them into it to facilitate their work as his forced research assistants. After teaching Kim to drivecans taped to her shoes help her reach the pedalshe abandoned them. They're relieved he's gone. Days, they attend school; nights, they sleep in the car, parked at the beach. The forest harboring deadly, blood-sucking iguanas excepted, the island's a stereotypical tourist destination. The boys' mother, Tina, a vain, selfish country singer, drops off money occasionally; the girls' mother, Maya, a miserly, crooked stockbroker, gives less. The children view both with mild dislike. Harsh circumstances and their own lack of affect make the children's adventures more grueling than enjoyable, more improbable than imaginative. Child abandonment, homelessness, and cruelty are portrayed as trivial yet rendered in fairly realistic detail by a Dahl-esque narrator whose whimsical tone is out of step with events. Misplaced humor, often adult-oriented, leaves a sour aftertaste, as when, played for laughs, Maya's sent to jail. The plot feels at war with itself, fantasy clashing with realism unsuccessfully. Here's hoping subsequent volumes find a better balance. (Fantasy. 8-12) Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
Move over, Boxcar Children the Fitzgerald-Trouts are here. Kim, Kimo, Pippa, and Toby are a cobbled-together family of four kids with a mishmash of four terrible parents who, for better or worse, only show up to drop off money. The rest of the time, the kids live in a little green car, roam around their tropical island home, and try to find a house. Kim, the eldest, feels it's her responsibility to take care of the rest of her siblings, and she tackles the challenge daringly. One gambit involves hiding in an IKEA-like store, and another the most audacious means driving through a treacherous forest populated by blood-sucking iguanas. Spalding's playful tone takes the edge off the neglectful parents and dire circumstances, largely thanks to the plucky, self-reliant kids who know (rightly) they are better off on their own. While a late-breaking reveal ushers in a bit of an abrupt change in tone, the episodic storytelling and intrepid, clever children nevertheless easily carry the plot, and a hint of further adventures happily signals a sequel. Illustrations not seen.--Hunter, Sarah Copyright 2016 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
SO MUCH OF children's literature depends on underage protagonists being able to set off on inadvisable adventures without the burden of adult supervision. So when Esta Spalding set out to write a wacky, lighthearted romp about homeless kids living in a car, she could have taken the tried-and-true route of simply knocking off the parents. Instead, in "Look Out for the Fitzgerald-Trouts," she's found a way to keep the moms and dads in the story, but out of the way: She made them all colossal jerks. The Fitzgerald-Trouts are four children, all under 12, each of whom shares at least one parent with at least one of the other kids (the complexity of their family tree is a running joke). Any of their biological parents - a scientist, a local folk hero, a top-of-the-charts country singer, and a one-percenter stockbroker - could have been a potential guardian for the brood, but none could be bothered. In the real world, such a scenario would be harrowing, and heartbreaking, which is probably why Spalding sets her story in an unnamed tropical paradise that feels comfortably distant from our reality. The island is inhabited by fauna and flora with exotic names like "puk-puk geese" and "mushi-mush" trees; the townsfolk are the kind of nonthreatening eccentrics you'd find on "Gilmore Girls"; the only dangerous area is a forest overrun with bloodsucking iguanas. But nobody seems bothered that these kids live on their own in something the size of a Mini Cooper. In an era when parents are getting arrested for letting their kids walk to school alone, that's about as fantastical as you can get. The Fitzgerald-Trouts have been living happily out of their tiny green sedan for years, like a mobile Swiss Family Robinson - fishing, bathing in the ocean, driving with cans tied to their feet so they can reach the pedals. Rather than pity cases, they are the envy of their schoolmates. Only when they begin to physically outgrow their vehicle does a real home become a desperate priority. These kids are witty, full of heart and genuinely fun to read about. But with their world so toothless, readers - like people in the book - need never worry about them. When they take up residence in an Ikea-like store, for instance, can we truly be concerned about the police finding out? These are the same cops who apparently have no laws against child endangerment. The sense of drama falls victim to the unreality. Waylon Zakowski, the newest grade-school hero from Sara Pennypacker, the author of the Clementine series, doesn't much need fantasy: He's got science. And a preternatural ability to see the magic in the workings of everything around him. In "Waylon! : One Awesome Thing," aimed at chapter-book readers, the title character both amuses and confounds by spouting off encyclopedia-worthy infoblurbs about things like the Big Bang, phantom limbs and mind-controlling viruses. He scoffs at his scientist mother for thinking gravity can't be improved upon. (She "studied how things were. He wanted to explore how things could be.") This is a kid who tugs his hair upward when learning something, so he can make room in his head for new information. Even if some young readers don't identify with Waylon, they are likely to relate to the very real pre-tween issues he's dealing with. As fourth grade begins, Waylon's stable little-kid existence suddenly gets way more complicated. Classmates who used to be friends are dividing into "teams," leaving Waylon unsure of whom to side with, fearing none will want him. His sister, Charlotte, whom he had relied on for support, has morphed into an emotionally distant teenage alien who coats herself in black lipstick, nail polish and eyeliner. On the surface, the stakes may not seem high, but after spending a few chapters with the endearingly oddball Waylon, readers will shudder at the thought that anything might squelch this boy's contagious joy and enthusiasm. And by the time the last page has been turned, readers might find themselves blurting out newly learned facts about, say, the number of atoms in a fingernail. Our world is "so amazing," as the book reminds us, "how could anyone hold it all in?" CHRISTOPHER HEALY is the author of the Hero's Guide trilogy for middle graders.