Scooter [Hardcover]

Vera B. Williams (Author, Illustrator)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 27, 1993 | Age Level: 7 and up

Elana is thrilled to be living all the way up on the eighth floor of 514 Melon Hill Avenue, an apartment building in New York City. But with her new life come changes--and challenges. Is her shiny scooter up to the crags and potholes of city sidewalks? Will she be able to make new friends? Can she find a way to help out little Petey, who everyone says doesn't talk? And will the kids from Melon Hill win any blue ribbons at the Borough-Wide Field Day?

As Elana coasts toward discoveries and surprises in her new home, she keeps one thing in mind: Anything can happen as long as you have a winning attitude and a cool set of wheels!

Elana Rose Rosen and her mother have just moved to a new apartment, and this is Elana's story about the event-filled summer that follows and the new neighbors and friends that become an important part of her life. "A pleasure to read....A story, told with tremendous inventiveness, of the satisfactions and intellectual excitements of childhood, of the worlds seen, explained and illustrated through the remarkable eyes of a remarkable girl."--New York Times Book Review.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In her latest work, Caldecott Honor artist Williams ( "More, More, More," Said the Baby ; A Chair for My Mother ) strings together a series of short vignettes to form a bouncy novel about a girl's adjustment to her parents' divorce. Elana Rose Rosen and her mother relocate to an apartment in a big city housing project where "Lanny" spends the summer making friends and practicing her favorite scooter tricks. She meets a virtual smorgasbord of kids and kindly neighbors and forms a special attachment to a boy named Petey who doesn't speak. Elana blossoms in her new environment with only a minimum number of tantrums or sad thoughts about her now-fractured family. The end-of-summer--and end-of-novel--Borough-Wide Field Day provides occasion for all the characters to let their talents shine. Though the era in which Lanny's adventures take place is never specified, numerous details suggest a setting of a few decades ago; happily, the story's universal themes and situations never seem dated. Feisty Elana's forthright voice supercharges the first-person narrative. Inventive hand-lettered acrostics open each chapter of this oversize novel, and a smattering of recipes and black-and-white spot illustrations lend an air of childlike authenticity to the account. Williams announces her versatility with this satisfying project. Ages 8-up.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Gr. 4-6. Elana Rose Rosen has just moved to an apartment in the city, and, on her scooter, she is excitedly exploring everything she can. New friends, old friends, a winning field day, and her relationship with young Petey (a boy who does not speak) fill her days as she fills sheet after sheet of paper with drawings, acrostics, and sayings. Illustrated with Elana's artwork and notes, this is a visually interesting book. The story is easygoing (Elana's one serious temper tantrum has the ring of truth) and brimming with the everyday details of urban family life--although there appears to be neither litter nor gangs on "these mean streets." The only real source of tension lies in what will happen to Petey, who has a sick mother and an ill-tempered father. Unfortunately, that's never directly addressed. Janice Del Negro

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Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 7 and up
  
• Hardcover: 160 pages
• Publisher: Greenwillow; 1st edition (October 27, 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0688093760
• ISBN-13: 978-0688093761
• Product Dimensions: 10.3 x 7.8 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,299,634 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Vera B. Williams lives in New York City.

In Her Own Words..."Throughout my childhood I was encouraged to make pictures, tell stories, act, and dance--all of this at a heaven in our New York City neighborhood called the Bronx House.

"Saturdays I painted with a crusading art director, Florence Cane. In her book The Growth of the Child Through Art, I appear under the name Linda. I was sixteen when the book appeared and embarrassed by it. But at age nine I had been totally proud when a painting of mine was exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art and I was later shown in the Movietone News explaining to Eleanor Roosevelt its Yiddish title, "Yentas."

"In 1945 I went to Black Mountain College in North Carolina, a unique educational community. I graduated in 1949 in graphic art, which I studied with Josef Albers. Along the way I planted corn, made butter, worked on the printing press, and helped to build the house in which I lived with Paul Williams, a fellow student I married there.

"I wanted that connection of art and community to continue. And it did at the Gate Hill Cooperative, a community we built with other Black Mountain people, a poet, musicians, and potters. I lived and worked there from 1953-1970 (after which I moved to Canada). My children (Sarah, Jenny, Merce) grew up there. For them, we branched out into a school, part of the Surnmerhill movement. The gingerbread houses that led to my first book for Greenwillow I first made in sticky variety at our school. I have always liked to teach and have taught art, cooking, writing, nature study, for nursery age on.

"At forty-six, no longer married, living in a houseboat on the bay at Vancouver, British Columbia, I did my first book. But before that could happen, the fates decreed a stint of cooking and running a bakery at a small school in the Ontario countryside. My love affair with Canada included also a 500-mile trip on the Yukon River. Many of those adventures I put in Three Days on a River in a Red Canoe.

"I also write and draw for adults-short stories, leaflets, and posters. As a lover of children, I try to do what I can to help save their earth from nuclear disaster. This pursuit, too, has added its excitement to my biography, including, in 1981, a month's stay in the federal penitentiary in Alderson, West Virginia (an outcome of a women's peaceful blockade of the Pentagon). Perhaps this experience will some day appear in one of my books. So far I've found children's books a wonderfully accommodating medium where any of my various activities might pop up."

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Amazing find for my 9 year old, June 21, 2006

By 

M. Beatty - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Scooter (Paperback)

My [...] daughter, who's usually too busy talking to sit down and read for any length of time, loves this book. She's been carrying it around with her, reading parts out loud ( ok she can't be quite for too long)and is generally smug about the fact that she's reading something that no one else in the family has. I suppose I shouldn't be surprise since she's always loved A Chair for my Mother and Cherries and Cherry Pits and going even further back -- More, More, More said the Baby. I only wish Vera B. Williams would write more for older children.