Doctor Moledinky's Castle : A Hometown Tale [Paperback]

Gerald Hausman (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 11, 1999

Twelve-year old Andy and his best friend Pauly spend one remarkable summer exploring their town Berkeley Bend and delving into the secrets of its unusual inhabitants. Woven into the tale are weird glimpses of Doctor Moledinky, his castle, moat and strange animal museum.

Editorial Reviews

From School Library Journal

Grade 4-8?Hausman's "Hometown Tale" is a storytelling delight. Andy, 12, is setting down the events of the strange summer of 1957 while it is still fresh in his mind. That particular summer is memorable for several reasons. A girl holds his hand at a chicken beheading, and then runs away with the head; and he and his best friend, Pauly, get a job feeding the animals in Doctor Moledinky's Animal Museum, a daily show that could be as entertaining for the bloodthirsty crowd as it is sporting for the hungry, cage-crazed gators and groundhogs. He and Pauly pay nighttime visits to Berkeley Bend's two weirdest denizens, Doctor Moledinky at his castle (with a moat) and Mrs. Henshaw, who lives in an unfinished shack in the shadow of the castle. These absorbing vignettes are loosely tied together by people and place. Each chapter has its own personality, and Hausman careens from humor to melodrama to melancholy, occasionally even to nostalgia. Each incident is faithfully filtered through an adolescent's eyes and Andy's wonder heightens the adventure for young readers, who may realize that Berkeley Bend?even with a millionaire and a witch or two?might not really be all that different from their own hometowns. This is a summer with more than one "steamy moat-drooling night," one full of unlikely connections.?John Sigwald, Unger Memorial Library, Plainview, TX
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

Gr. 7^-12. In first-person stories that speak directly to readers, Andy tells about his twelfth summer and his somewhat bizarre hometown. In "Bobby the Streak and Joey the Jolt," Andy and his friend Pauly discover a local fleet-footed hood's secret for running like the wind--Brylcream and a D.A. ("Duck's Ass" ) hairstyle. In another episode, the two friends venture into Italian Town, where they confront Joey the Jolt Delmonico, another local bad boy. The narrative voice sometimes lapses into self-conscious philosophizing, and the use of the phrase "two-fisted, bad-sided greaseball" in one story is unnecessarily derogatory. But the language is engaging, often poetic, and frequently humorous as Andy delves into the lives of a town full of eccentrics and tries to make sense of everybody's story. Janice Del Negro --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 151 pages
• Publisher: Irie Books (November 11, 1999)
• ISBN-10: 0970911211
• ISBN-13: 978-0970911216
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.5 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #5,179,731 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

I am an inveterate storyteller, which is to say: I love to do it, am helpless not to do it, and I do it all the time, even when I am by myself there is an inner monologue going on in my head. This habit of privately roving around in the land of legends is something I've done for as long as I can remember. My mom worried about me when she saw that I spent too much time by myself. I would creep into a closet and close the door and in the silence of the darkness I would spin tales of all kinds. I was never lonely as a kid because I had the imagination of a wild thing, and I was content to play in the fields and valleys and secret caves of that imaginary world.