Amazon.com Review
Star of
3rd Rock from the Sun, actor John Lithgow is less well known as a music enthusiast, but in his comical verse story
The Remarkable Farkle McBride, he has created the musical prodigy he would perhaps like to have been. Farkle is a little boy with astounding talents (he's playing violin with the orchestra by the age of 3) but little perseverance. Each year he gets bored with his instrument, takes up and masters a new one, and then gets bored with that. Of his recently beloved trombone, he says, "The racket is more than my eardrums can bear! So return it or throw it away! I don't care!" In the end, Farkle realizes that the whole orchestra is his instrument: he finds satisfaction as a conductor, and the book ends with a gatefold of him triumphantly leading all the other musicians. C.F. Payne's illustrations combine a Norman Rockwell realism with a caricaturist's sense of humor. (Ages 5 and older)
--Richard Farr
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
From Publishers Weekly
No stranger to music (he released a CD for children titled "Singin' in the Bathtub"), actor Lithgow pens a romp of a tale about a prodigy whose quest for the perfect instrument leads him through virtually every section of the orchestra. "When Farkle McBride was a three-year-old tyke,/ All freckle-y, bony, and thin,/ He astonished his friends and his family alike/ By playing superb violin." After his debut, the easily dissatisfied diminutive genius trades in his fiddle for a flute ("He went Rootle-ee/ Tootle-ee/ Tootle-ee Too/ With all of the winds at his side"), then a trombone and subsequently percussion, all to no avail. Not until he steps in for an ill conductor does he finds his niche; a gatefold spread shows him ("satisfied!") in front of "all the instruments he ever tried." Lithgow's nimble verse with a limerick's beat sparkles as he introduces readers to the various instruments and their sounds. Payne's outrageously droll mixed media illustrations, with their blend of caricature and realism, recall Kathryn Hewitt's work in Lives of the Musicians. Although Farkle is remarkably difficult to please, his tale may well strike a chord with anyone who's ever made overtures at musicianship. Ages 4-8.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
