From Publishers Weekly
A promising premise and colorful cast of characters don't quite overcome the abrupt finish in Beard's (The Pumpkin-Man from Piney Creek) middle-grade novel set in 1950. Ten-year-old Bobbie Jo Hailey, the appealing heroine, meets up with a jolly, fast-talking salesman, F. Bam Morrison, who promises to bring the Big Top to sleepy little Wetumka, Okla. He drafts into his cause Bobbie Jo and mean Clara Jean Knox, who wears clear plastic boots even when it's sunny outside, then barters for food and lodging among the townspeople in exchange for tickets to the show. Here the story inexplicably crumbles. When it becomes clear that Mr. Morrison is, in fact, a flimflam con man, and he flees town, there is no consequence for the girls, no denouement and no resolution?the duped pair is simply left by the side of the dusty road. The author tacks on an epilogue, but readers may still feel they've been left hanging. Ages 7-10.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From School Library Journal
Grade 3-6?Ostensibly revolving around a confidence game that the residents of Wetumka, OK, lost during the summer of 1950, this quirky novel is not quite what it first seems. Beard gives her charmless con man the catalytic power to heal stuttering and forge friendships while, of course, lying "smooth as glass" to everyone. Bobbie Jo, the 10-year-old narrator with a speech impediment, sets the scene and tells how life in the small town changes when F. Bam Morrison drives up in his fancy turquoise Chevy and announces that the circus is coming. He recruits Bobbie Jo as his promotional aide, and she eases her guilty conscience for calling the bullying Clara Jean's daddy a drunk by making the older, friendless girl her partner. The youngsters help the flimflam man peddle his "limited" advance supply of tickets. They also collaborate to fulfill the "show must go on" promise that their devious mentor made. Following the "if you get stuck with a lemon, make lemonade" philosophy, the hoodwinked townsfolk create an annual Sucker Day Festival in self-effacing commemoration of their gullibility. Some of the narration is funny, laced with delightful vernacular?"A fly could have flown in [to Clara Jean's gaping mouth] and roasted marshmallows and she wouldn't even have noticed"?but, in the end, the ludicrous idea that this bamboozler may be "true blue" sorry (he delivers a pathetic I-never-meant-to-hurt-you apology to the ever-credulous Bobbie Jo as he heads out of town with everyone's money) does young readers a disservice by validating his lies.?John Sigwald, Unger Memorial Library, Plainview, TX
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
