Amazon.com Review
This hauntingly beautiful story is written in dialogue--a sort of play for the reader's mind's eye. As the curtain rises on the quiet drama, Courtney, 16, and Elva, 88, lie in adjacent beds in a nursing home where the TV hasn't worked for years. Courtney has a severed spinal cord and will never walk again. Her parents are dead, and she has been left here all alone, full of anger and bitterness. Elva, on the other hand, in spite of her advancing age and failing eyesight, is sustained by her memories of poetry, art, literature, and love. But her recitation of poems and references to great books and plays draw only sullen silence from Courtney. Eagerly, Elva entreats the young girl to pass the time by joining her on an imaginary trip to Italy, reading aloud from a 1910 Baedeker guide--a trip Elva had always promised her long-dead husband Emmett. At last, out of boredom, Courtney agrees, and the three of them begin by arriving on a steamship in the Bay of Naples. At first Courtney is resistant, and soon becomes actively destructive as she discovers the power she wields as imaginary tour guide. But gradually, in a bittersweet ending, Courtney succumbs to the liberating joys of letting the mind run free.
Paul Fleischman has earned accolades for several other equally innovative works: the Newbery Medal for Joyful Noise, a Newbery Honor for Graven Images, the Scott O'Dell Award for Bull Run, and places on several honor lists for Whirligig. (Ages 11 and older) --Patty Campbell
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Publishers Weekly
Written as a script and set in a convalescent home in present-day North Dakota, this provocative story traces the relationship between 16-year-old Courtney (now a paraplegic), and Elva, her 88-year-old roommate. A former English teacher, Elva peppers her conversation with literary allusions as she doggedly encourages Courtney to transcend her physical limitations. "You'll need to spend hours on your mind, not your hair," Elva says. Fleischman cleverly sets up readers to side first with Courtney, who has all she can do to accept her body's condition, then leads them to switch allegiance to Elva, as the spunky octogenarian uses a 1910 Baedeker's Italy to lure Courtney into joining her on an imaginary grand tour of Italy. What follows is a transformative journey not only through the landscape of turn-of-the-century Italy, but also of the mindAfraught with detours as Elva reminisces and Courtney rages against her fate. The author anchors the strongest scenes in sumptuous sensory details of the "trip." But several threads are left dangling: a subtheme, in which Courtney gloms onto the legend of Medusa and fantasizes about wrecking several of Italy's masterpieces with her own evil eye, fizzles out; and, more disappointingly, Courtney's grief at Elva's death takes place offstage. Still, as the final curtain falls, the scene is a hopeful one: the mantle has passed from Elva to Courtney, who persuades her new roommate to join in the fantasy excursion. Whether read solo or presented as a play, this novel, like much of Fleischman's (Weslandia) oeuvre, honors the power and life of mind and spirit. Ages 12-up. (Sept.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
