Available:*
Library | Call Number | Status |
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Searching... McMinnville Public Library | Wilson, J. | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Monmouth Public Library | J Fic Wilson, J. 2007 | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Willamina Public Library | JF WILSON | Searching... Unknown |
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Summary
Summary
CHOOSING BETWEEN PARENTS AND FRIENDS Candyfloss is the perfect introduction to jacqueline Wilson. When Floss's mother and stepfather announce they are moving to Australia for six months, Floss has to decide whether to go with them or stay home with Dad--inept, but loving and always lots of fun. And how will her choice affect her friendship with her popular but not-so-loyal best friend, Rhiannon? About girls everywhere, for girls everywhere, Candyfloss speaks in universals: it's about friendship, family, and growing up in a complicated world. Like all Wilson's novels, it has an honesty and cheerful integrity that offers a real alternative to the materialistic values of so much fiction aimed at girls.
Author Notes
Jacqueline Wilson was born in Bath, England on December 17, 1945. She always wanted to be a writer and as a teenager, started working as a journalist for Jackie magazine. Since becoming a full-time writer, she has written numerous novels including The Dare Game; Bad Girls; The Worry Website; Lola Rose; The Diamond Girls; Clean Break; and Hetty Feather. Her novels have been adapted numerous times for television, and commonly deal with such difficult topics as adoption, divorce, and mental illness. She has also won numerous awards including the Guardian Children's Fiction Award for The Illustrated Mum; the Smarties Prize, the Sheffield Children's Book Award and the Children's Book Award for Double Act; The Young Telegraph/Fully Booked Award in 1995 for The Bed and Breakfast Star; and the 2002 Blue Peter People's Choice Award for The Story of Tracy Beaker. In 2015 she made the New Zealand Best Seller List with her title The Butterfly Club.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (6)
School Library Journal Review
Gr 4-7-Flossie's mom is remarried and has a prosperous life with her husband and baby. Flossie's dad, however, is close to 40 and hasn't gotten it together. Overweight, depressed, and financially hard up, he is his own worst enemy. When Flossie's mom and stepdad move to Sydney for six months, Flossie convinces her mother to let her stay with her loving but inept father in London. Her life changes drastically when she starts going to school looking unkempt and smelling of her father's greasy-spoon cafe. She loses her superficial and status-conscious friends, but makes friends with Susan, whose background is more like hers. After numerous trials that end in near homelessness, Flossie's father finally puts the divorce behind him. When he encounters Rose, a fortune-teller and cotton-candy maker with a traveling carnival, he's met his true match. Flossie is a likable character who discovers the meaning of true friendship, suffers hardship with aplomb, and learns some important life lessons along the way. Readers will cheer her on and feel satisfaction when she sees her ex-best friend for the bully and snob that she is.-Catherine Ensley, Latah County Free Library District, Moscow, ID (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Publisher's Weekly Review
The latest from Britain's former Children's Laureate is vintage Wilson. Flora Barnes splits her week between her mother, who has remarried a successful executive, and her father whose situation is less rosy. When her stepfather accepts a temporary transfer to Australia, "Floss," as she is called, must choose to spend six months in sunny Sydney or to stay with her father above his failing chip shop. At school, she's also torn. Her best friend, the "posh and persnickety" Rhiannon, has become materialistic and judgmental; Floss can't stand the cruel teasing Rhiannon directs at a new classmate. When Floss chooses to stay with her dad-because she realizes he needs her more than her mother does-her standing at school suffers. Her mismatched clothing, which carries the greasy spoon's scent, makes her the new target of Rhiannon's torments. Meanwhile, her father is losing his shop to bankruptcy and the possibility of homelessness becomes real. This tension paces a novel that contains many compelling, sometimes gritty, elements-shopping, gambling, fair-going, romance, a knife-fight and even a scary fire. All that action makes the narrative longer than usual for this age group, but Floss's emotional turmoil should hook girls. There's a real tenderness to her relationship with her father, fully dimensional in all his flaws, a man whose love for his daughter often clouds his judgment. A full page of Sharratt's comic-strip-style panels opens each chapter, and "Floss's Glossary" defines unfamiliar Briticisms. Ages 9-12. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Horn Book Review
(Intermediate) ""Candyfloss"" is British for cotton candy -- which Wilson's novel does and does not resemble. It goes down as easily, but it's more filling, less sugary. Pre-teen Floss (short for Flora) doesn't quite fit with the new family unit of mother, stepfather, and baby brother; she adores her down-on-his-luck weekend dad. When Mum tells Floss that they're moving to Australia for six months, Floss decides to stay with Dad; he needs her, and she doesn't want to leave best friend Rhiannon, either. Before you know it, Floss is wondering if she'll have a roof over her head (the bank has foreclosed on dad's customer-less cafe), breaking off with Rhiannon (who, as readers have already suspected, is a mean, self-centered bully), and missing Mum. But wait! Here comes a true friend; a few hair-raising adventures and happy coincidences; and a wish-fulfillment ending to beat all. Wilson (second in popularity only to J. K. Rowling in the UK) mixes familiar situations and concerns with a brisk pace and a main character her tween-girl readers would like to be best friends with -- quite the win-ning package. Pages of panels arranged in comic-strip format introduce each chapter, setting tone and foreshadowing incident, illustrating Floss's feelings, and, as in the final page picturing Dad and Floss's rosy future, extending the action. A much-needed glossary is appended -- though you may regret looking up the meaning of chip butty. (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted. All rights reserved.
Kirkus Review
Flora (Floss) Barnes shuttles back and forth between Dad and Mum, Steve and half-brother Tiger. When her stepfather's job requires moving to Australia for six months, Floss makes the agonizing decision to stay behind with her father who is in serious debt with his failing caf business and on the verge of becoming homeless. Suddenly, Floss's life changes dramatically with newfound worries and fears offset by everlasting hope her father will succeed and build a new life for them. Floss's normal school and tween friendship conflicts are complicated by an adult lifestyle that is less than suitable for a suburban middle-class child. Added to her stress is the guilt Floss feels keeping Mum in the dark and her stoic resolve to stay with Dad for moral support. British author Wilson portrays heavy issues of poverty, bankruptcy, drunken/bawdy adult behavior, bullying and unconditional parental/child love through a determined protagonist and a group of believable secondary characters--though they're somewhat melodramatic in their thoughts and actions. Chapters foreshadow with a one-page black-and-white set of graphic novel-style scenes. Will provoke readers' questions and speculation on the open-ended conclusion, and mother/daughter discussion possibilities are encouraged with the appended reading guide. British idioms outlined in "Floss's Glossary." (Fiction. 10-14) Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
*Starred Review* When her mother, stepfather, and baby brother go off to Australia for six months, Flossie makes the difficult choice to stay home with her dad, the owner of a failing café. Worse, Flossie's former best friend, the classroom queen, has become a bullying enemy, making fun of the cooking oil smell on Flossie's clothes and denigrating the nice new girl, Susan. Having assembled these perennially interesting ingredients, Wilson produces a poignant, gently humorous, and totally satisfying tale. Flossie is charmingly believable, idiosyncratic, but recognizable as an upper-elementary-school girl who has almost, but not quite, outgrown stuffed animals and imaginary play. Each chapter begins with a full page of cartoon-style panels indicating the action to follow. American readers may be unfamiliar with chip butties, the french fry sandwich that is Flossie's father's specialty, but they will recognize the school social scene and cheer Flossie's newfound backbone. Floss's Gloss in the back translates unfamiliar British phrases and may encourage readers to find more of this best-selling British author's work.--Isaacs, Kathleen Copyright 2007 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
WITH all the ambitious novels for young adults and fat fantasy trilogies, it's easy to forget the abiding category of children's domestic fiction - stories for 9-to-12-year-olds about school, friends and family. Beverly Cleary provided the postwar model with her books about Beezus, Ramona and Henry Huggins; Judy Blume and Norma Klein brought a little edge to the genre in the 1970s; and Ann M. Martin sold millions of books with the Baby-Sitters Club series in the 1980s. It's essential to the appeal of the genre that the setting feel like home, broadly sketched. In these books, a girl (usually) has a nice-enough life and confronts just enough challenges to keep things interesting. Her best friend finds a new best friend, or her best friend moves away. She moves away. Maybe the other kids ostracize her, or there's a pestering new baby or stepmother. Any of these motifs can garner enough empathy for the heroine that, while we may not want to be her, we are pleased to have an emotional stake in her fortunes. While fantasy and historical fiction - which to kids can seem just as exotic as fantasy - can sail across oceans and languages with relative ease, this kind of domestic realism, comedy especially, doesn't travel so well or nearly so often. (Especially not here, but we'll leave the scandal of American import-export publishing ratios for another time.) Jacqueline Wilson is Britain's most popular exponent of school-and-family fiction and the most-borrowed author in United Kingdom libraries, a valuable statistic we know thanks to the country's Public Lending Right office, which gives token royalties to authors on the basis of library circulation. Wilson probably maintains this edge over J.K. Rowling because she's written so darn much - more than 80 novels. But her books have never quite caught on in the United States. Wilson's latest American publisher, Roaring Brook Press, hopes to change that with "Candyfloss." In the story, Floss's birthday - year cannily unspecified - has arrived with some nice if slightly suspect presents: new jeans, "trainers" (or sneakers), a stationery set and a pink (Floss's and this book's favorite color cheerio, lads) suitcase. Yes, Floss and her mum and her mum's husband, Steve, and her bratty little half-brother are all going to Australia for six months because the go-getter stepfather has a special work project there. Wait till I tell the kids at school! But, wait again: what about Dad? Floss surprises everyone, including herself, when she decides to forgo the Australia lark and move into her father's shabby apartment over his shabby cafe to subsist on a diet of fry-ups and chip butties (French-fry sandwiches, to you lot) and endure the teasing when she goes to school smelling like cooking oil. The school part of the story, where Floss loses her best-friend status with the glamorous and shallow Rhiannon but gains a true friend in the nerdy and nice Susan Potts ("Swotty Potty"), holds no surprises, as Wilson refuses to give Rhiannon (or her cow of a mother) any redeeming qualities. The familiarity of the trope, however, may give genre fans safe ground from which to experience the more daring and revelatory story of Floss and her parents. Mum is capable, practical and unsentimental, applauding Floss for throwing out her stuffed animals in preparation for the move; Dad is more gentle and imaginative but is also, as Floss's mother ever so delicately puts it, "a failure." He gives Floss secondhand clothes - if silver high heels and a pink bridesmaid's dress - for her birthday. He loses the cafe and the upstairs flat because he can't pay the mortgage. Twice he has to defend himself and Floss against marauding yobs, and twice he loses. Both parents love Floss, but her dad needs her more. A tough spot to put a young girl in, you might say, but Wilson's heroines are used to it. Whether on their own, as in her books about Tracy Beaker, an abandoned child; or dealing with a mentally ill mother ("The Illustrated Mum"); or handling bullies ("Bad Girls"), Wilson's girls are durable in a refreshingly unfeisty way, and though subject to the parents and other authorities in their lives, they're very much in charge of their own destinies. While she's always kind enough to give her stories a hopeful ending, Wilson's particular gift is her loyalty to her protagonists and readers: she never betrays either by pretending that grown-ups can sort it all out. Although he certainly, even heartbreakingly, fumbles in the right direction, Floss's father does not know best. "Too British" has long been an impediment to publishing success here. It's acceptable, even desirable, in fantasy, but too much of a stopper in realistic fiction. Traditionally, vocabulary gets changed, with trainers becoming sneakers and gardens backyards and so forth. But "Candyfloss" leaves all that in, and Floss helps readers with an appended glossary: "I'm not such pants at," for instance, means "not so bad at." "This is slightly rude," Floss explains, "as in Britain, pants means panties, not trousers." For American readers, Floss won't sound like the girl next door unless they're already pretending they live at Hogwarts. But the trainers and jumpers and chips aren't what's really different about "Candyfloss." Floss, bless her brave little heart, is showing up in a publishing era that is largely ignoring stories like hers in favor of glitzier, sexier mean-girl fare. For girls who have outgrown Ramona but are still wary of "The Clique," Floss makes an able, admirable companion. She may not live next door, but you'll wish she did. Wilson is the most popular author in U.K. libraries - exceeding you-know-who. Roger Sutton is editor in chief of the Horn Book.