An Impossumble Summer [Hardcover]

Brenda W. Clough (Author), Janet Little (Illustrator)

Book Description

Age Level: 8 and up

After years of living abroad, ten-year-old Rianne and her family move to Reston, Virginia, where the acquaintance of a talking possum seems to influence the luck in their lives--sometimes for better and sometimes for worse.

Editorial Reviews

From School Library Journal

Grade 3-6-- Is a talking opossum who gives away good luck possible or ``Impossumble?'' Rianne is old enough, at ten, to be skeptical, but the creature she and her little sister help escape from the pet farm certainly does speak, and the family does run into good fortune. Only later does the Impossumble (a.k.a., the opossum) explain that laws of luck are the same as laws of physics--for every bit of good luck there is an equal and opposite bit of misfortune. Thus, when Rianne's father is held hostage by terrorists, she knows that she has to start negotiations with the animal. This pleasant cautionary tale has sparks of intrigue similar to Norton's The Borrowers (HBJ, 1953), or O'Brien's Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH (Atheneum, 1971), with an idea close to that in the Stermans' Too Much Magic (Lippincott, 1987), but sadly, does not fulfill its promise. The absolute magic of the Impossumble's tiny bedroom in the basement is lost to readers when she decides to move instead to the woods. Although the human characters are engaging, pleasant people facing real, everyday situations in the midst of ``maybe'' magic, their story is not compelling. Fodder only for the most voracious of fantasy readers. --Jody McCoy, Casady School, Oklahoma City
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews

Coming from an overseas posting, Rianne, Shannon, and Abe find their new neighborhood--a plastic community a stone's throw from the State Department, where their father is chief of security--impossibly stodgy. Then they meet an ordinary-looking opossum who talks and gives away luck that's quite real, as Rianne learns when she buys a winning lottery ticket. Unfortunately, the good luck is always countered by bad--a scary automobile accident, a tree falling through the roof; when the bad luck escalates to having their father taken hostage by terrorists, the kids swear off further opossum meddling. After all, the animal couldn't even save her own woods from destruction. So much doesn't add up here that the book doesn't quite make it as humor or suspense: e.g., though the opossum talks, she insists on dumb-animal status; and the bad luck is far out of proportion to the good. The moral seems to be either: Don't mess with Mother Nature, or press your luck--or make bad puns like ``impossumble.'' (Fiction. 10+) -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 8 and up
  
• Hardcover: 144 pages
• Publisher: Walker & Co; First edition (April 1992)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0802781500
• ISBN-13: 978-0802781505
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 5.9 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #7,340,436 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Brenda W. Clough spent much of her childhood overseas, courtesy of the U.S. government. She has lived in Laos, the Philippines, Hong Kong, and Germany. She returned to Pittsburgh, PA to earn a degree in English/Creative Writing at Carnegie Mellon University in 1977.

Several years working as a meek mild-mannered reporter for a major metropolitan newsletter enabled her to write a fantasy novel, THE CRYSTAL CROWN (1984). She has also written THE DRAGON OF MISHBIL (1985), THE REALM BENEATH (1986), and THE NAME OF THE SUN (1988) Her children's novel, AN IMPOSSUMBLE SUMMER (1992) is set in her own house in Virginia, where she lives in a cottage at the edge of a forest.

A number of short stories have appeared in anthologies, the most recent being HOME IS THE SAILOR in the anthology STARLIGHT 3 (Tor 2001), and HOW TO SAVE THE WORLD (Tor 1996, Charles Sheffield, ed.). She also had a novella MAY BE SOME TIME in the 2001 issue of ANALOG, which was on the final ballot for both the Hugo and the Nebula Awards. Her short story titled TIMES FIFTY, in the October 2001 issue of CHRISTIANITY TODAY, won a Higher Goals in Christian Journalism award from the Evangelical Press Association.

Her novels HOW LIKE A GOD and the sequel DOORS OF DEATH AND LIFE were published by Tor Books in 1997. In its review Locus Magazine says, "Clough brings myth and science and plain human existence (complex as all get-out) together for what proves to be a fine blend, and a very good read, offering physical, psychological, and metaphysical insights into the human condition, along with the sometimes delightfully outlandish action that drives the best of pulp fiction."

And the New York Times Book Review says, "Ms. Clough has an appealingly cheeky imagination."

Her newest novel, REVISE, was published on line at Book View Café (www.bookviewcafe.com) in 2009.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Awesome Opossum Uses Its Claws Some!, July 14, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: An Impossumble Summer (Hardcover)

Consider the opossum -- easily the most underestimated and least-regarded of all God's creatures. Yet, beneath its unprepossessing exterior beats the heart of a mighty warrior, and its beady little eyes give little hint of the shrewd intellect that hides behind them! This rollicking adventure yarn is the story of a single mighty marsupial, and the impact his fur-covered, vaguely rat-like presence had on three lonely kids in the suburbs of Washington, DC.

Washington, DC, you say? Surely the surrounding municipalities are naught but soulless concrete and macadam expanses! Opossums are creatures of the wilderness, where they roam free and untrammeled by the laws of Man! How could such suburban terrain offer any home to the plucky pouched perambulators in question? Easy! Unassuming in mien and strangely loveable in demeanor, the awesome opossum is tough, tenacious and territorial. The species arouse in South America (where life was and is cheap), along with other pouched compadres, even as placental counterparts evolved in North America. When the land bridge of Central America rose from the waters, the placental mammals migrated South and wiped out the indigenous species -- except for the mighty opossum. With its nightmarish claws and near-prehensile tale, not to mention its cunning strategy of feigning faint ("playing `possum"), the white-furred wonders soon carved out a place for themselves in the North American food chain (somewhere above cat food and below hillbillies). Now, no patch of park bigger than my mother's apron is free of the cuddly night-crawlers!

This book is a lot of fun. It reminds me of E. Nesbit's work, and all those English kids novels about young ones who have adventures while their parents are off crushing rebellions in India or something. I wish that there had been more of the talking opossum in it, but that's probably because I just can't get enough of those whisker-snouted wayfarers.