Customer Reviews

An Impossumble Summer

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

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.