Flapjack Waltzes [Hardcover]

Nancy Hope Wilson (Author)

Book Description

Age Level: 9 and up | Grade Level: 4 and up

A grieving twelve-year-old girl decides to live again.

Two years earlier, Natalie Larrabee's teenaged brother was killed in a freak car accident. The brother of her best friend, Zheng, was also in the car but lived. Zheng still has all her siblings, and Natalie has none.

Unable to continue her friendship with Zheng and uncomfortable with the other kids at school, Natalie longs for companionship. Then the empty house in the neighborhood is sold, and Natalie prays that a girl her age will move in. But the new owner is a retired professor - and childless.

Reluctantly at first, Natalie is drawn into the life of Professor Herta Ehrlich. The elderly woman's house becomes her safe haven, a place where Natalie can forget that her own house is practically a morgue, that her parents barely function as parents - that her family has fallen apart. It's also where Natalie determines to confront her parents and restore her friendship with Zheng. Intermingling vivid scenes from the past with the present, this is a poignant and inspiriting story about death and renewal in springtime.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Through 12-year-old Natalie Larabee's first-person narration, Wilson (Becoming Felix) delivers a sensitive portrayal of a girl grieving the death of her brother. Beginning with a flashback to two years prior, the year of Jimmy's fatal car accident, Wilson uses alternating chapters between past and present to piece together the memories and events leading up to Nattie's honest admission of her feelings to her parents. With only her dog Omega as a companion, Nattie wants her parents to begin living again and longs to make pancakes and waltz around the kitchen as they had before. But when those efforts seem fruitless, Natalie forges an unusual friendship with a new neighbor, a Holocaust survivor who helps her to put things in perspective. Eventually, Nattie also reconnects with her estranged best friend?whose brother survived the same accident that killed Jimmy. The pacing is uneven, and readers may often wonder what triggers certain memories at appointed times in the novel. However, Natalie is a strong, likable character, and readers may well embrace the novel's message of renewal. For a more gracefully rendered treatment of the impact of loss on a family, try Snowdrops for Cousin Ruth (reviewed June 1). Ages 8-12.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From School Library Journal

Grade 5-7-Natalie Larrabee, 12, has plenty to be angry about. Two years ago, her teenage brother was killed in an automobile wreck, not by alcohol, or lack of a seat belt, or by daredevil driving, but by a flying boom box. She not only lost Jimmy, but, in their grief, her parents seem to have become emotionally removed from her. Her anger has also caused her to cut herself off from her best friend, whose brother survived the accident. When a nearby house is sold, Natalie hopes it will be occupied by a new girl who doesn't know about her brother, so that a fresh friendship can be forged, unweighted by tragedy. She is initially disappointed when an elderly German professor moves in and asks her to work for her. Shocked to discover that Herta, too, has suffered loss because of the Holocaust, Natalie begins to ask questions about death and life; and Herta begins to remember the sweet familial details she thought she had lost. Although frequent flashbacks may give the plot a slightly jerky tone for less sophisticated readers, anyone who has experienced loss will certainly identify with Natalie's confusion and distress. When Herta tells Natalie, "If you are angry...you have started refusing to die," readers begin to see that the Larrabees must communicate more honestly to embrace life fully again. An interesting comparative unit could be devised by pairing this title with Wilson's Bringing Nettie Back (Macmillan, 1992), which explores the effect of stroke-caused personality loss on friendship.
Cindy Darling Codell, Clark Middle School, Winchester, KY
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 9 and up
  
• Hardcover: 144 pages
• Publisher: Books for Young Readers; 1st edition (September 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0374323453
• ISBN-13: 978-0374323455
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.6 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,895,166 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An interesting read, but a few parts were unclear., February 1, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Flapjack Waltzes (Hardcover)

The relationships of some of the characters in this story were hard to follow. The actual cause of death of her brother and how that related to her relationship with her friend, Zheng, should have been discussed earlier in the novel. Overall, I felt that this book was well written, but some crucial aspects were hazy.