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Summary
Summary
"Kate DiCamillo's new children's novel is a balm for the soul." - The New York Times
The beloved author of Because of Winn-Dixie has outdone herself with a hilarious and achingly real love story about a girl, a ghost, a grandmother, and growing up.
It's the summer before fifth grade, and for Ferris Wilkey, it is a summer of sheer pandemonium: Her little sister, Pinky, has vowed to become an outlaw. Uncle Ted has left Aunt Shirley and, to Ferris's mother's chagrin, is holed up in the Wilkey basement to paint a history of the world. And Charisse, Ferris's grandmother, has started seeing a ghost at the threshold of her room, which seems like an alarming omen given that she is also feeling unwell. But the ghost is not there to usher Charisse to the Great Beyond. Rather, she has other plans--wild, impractical, illuminating plans. How can Ferris satisfy a specter with Pinky terrorizing the town, Uncle Ted sending Ferris to spy on her aunt, and her father battling an invasion of raccoons?
As Charisse likes to say, "Every good story is a love story," and Kate DiCamillo has written one for the ages: emotionally resonant and healing, showing the two-time Newbery Medalist at her most playful, universal, and profound.
Author Notes
Kate DiCamillo is one of America's most beloved storytellers. She is a former National Ambassador for Young People's Literature and a two-time Newbery Medalist. Born in Philadelphia, she grew up in Florida and now lives in Minneapolis.
Reviews (5)
Publisher's Weekly Review
The summer before fifth grade turns out to be a "serious time, in general" for 10-year-old Emma Phineas Wilkey--known as Ferris because of her dramatic birth under a Ferris wheel--as she aids in her idiosyncratic family members' antics and deals with the unfamiliar emotional terrain that accompanies these encounters. Ferris's headstrong younger sister, an aspiring felon, is scheming to appear on a "Wanted" poster; Uncle Ted, who is attempting to paint a history of the world while living in Ferris's basement, recruits Ferris to spy on his estranged wife; and Ferris's beloved, hopeless romantic grandmother's heart is failing. But her grandmother is more troubled by the appearance of a ghost that only she can see, so she enlists Ferris's help in satisfying the specter's quixotic request. Together with her soft-spoken, piano-playing best friend Billy Jackson, Ferris navigates her joyfully chaotic environment and heeds her grandmother's wisdom: "Every good story is a love story." Populated by offbeat, compelling characters with rich histories, this bustling and empathetic tale by DiCamillo (The Puppets of Spelhorst) ponders the courage it takes to love someone and the necessity of inconvenience in life through the eyes of one emotionally curious tween. Main characters read as white. Ages 8--12. Agent: Holly McGhee, Pippin Properties. (Mar.)
Horn Book Review
Returning to her literary roots in Florida (see: Because of Winn-Dixie, rev. 7/00; Raymie Nightingale, rev. 3/16), DiCamillo again explores bonds of family, friends, and community. Ferris Winkey finds the summer before fifth grade a puzzling one. Much turbulence surrounds her immediate family, her best friend, and some townspeople: her beloved grandmother, Clarisse, sees a ghost; her uncle leaves his wife and takes up residence in the Winkey basement; her younger sister aspires to be a famous outlaw; and her piano prodigy best friend plays "Mysterious Barricades" exclusively and repeatedly. Thanks to her fourth-grade teacher, who now cries constantly, Ferris has the words for these characters: formidable, unfathomable, unrepentant, quixotic, and bereft. Foreboding is another word Ferris contemplates as Clarisse's health gradually fails. But having the words to describe people and understanding them is not the same. In a glorious climax in which all the book's characters gather to appease the ghost, Ferris discovers that obstacles between individuals can disappear if they have the courage to believe in, rather than simply define, a word she knew all along: love. The limited third-person narration glimpses other lives but never dwells on them, thus leaving Ferris's honest, pre-adolescent perspective to drive the story line. As Clarisse tells Ferris, "Every good story is a love story." Here, DiCamillo adeptly proves this axiom. Betty CarterJanuary/February 2024 p.93 (c) Copyright The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Booklist Review
Ten-year-old Ferris (nicknamed as such after being born at the local fairgrounds) is contending with a hectic household. Her beloved live-in grandmother is ailing, and Ferris can't begin to contemplate a life without her existence. Her uncle has split from her aunt and spends his days holed up in the basement, attempting to paint a history of the world; he's only managed a single foot so far. She's feeling distant from her little sister, Pinky, who spends her time terrorizing the town in an attempt to fulfill a dream of becoming an old-timey outlaw. One more thing: her grandma has gotten glimpses of a ghost in her doorway, and the ghost has a specific request that needs satisfying, and it's up to Ferris to see it through. If it sounds terrifically zany, it certainly is, but it's also wonderfully grounded in deep familial bonds, a tight-knit community, and the beautiful idea that every relationship is a love story in its own way. The kindly town and its eccentric inhabitants come to life via comical anecdotes and gorgeous descriptions, and it all sets the stage for some truly transcendent moments that will leave readers in a state of wonder, no matter their age. It's a spectacularly silly and perfectly sincere exploration of what it means to stay tenderhearted in a sometimes challenging world.High-Demand Backstory: It's a DiCamillo! That alone should get patrons lining up.
School Library Journal Review
Gr 3--7--"Every story is a love story." Rising fifth grader Ferris hears this wisdom from her grandmother, Charisse, and through this lens begins to notice all the ways in which the actions of her community, however bizarre they might seem at first glance, are unspoken declarations of love. There's the ghost that appears to Charisse, who wants the family to light a chandelier to reunite her with her lost love. There's Ferris's friend Billy Jackson, whose love for his mother who died in childbirth lives on through the music he plays. There's Ferris's uncle Ted and his wife Shirley, who are on the outs after he quits his job to paint a history of the world. And of course Ferris's sister Pinky, who wants to be an outlaw and doesn't seem to love anybody, though Ferris realizes later this isn't true. DiCamillo's latest work is a sweet and heartfelt effort, though it is lacking the author's typical fully fleshed-out characters. They are largely defined by their quirks, and their actions begin to feel repetitive and do not propel the story forward. For instance, it seems like Billy's sole function for much of the story is to play "Mysterious Barricades" on the piano in the background. It feels more like a three-dimensional painting than a story; each character has a role and a place, and readers are invited to look at the whole but static picture to examine the idea of love. VERDICT While dialogue shows the author's characteristic charm, the story itself is lacking a strong narrative voice and drive. Purchase where DiCamillo's other titles circulate well.--Lindsay Loup
Kirkus Review
Ferris finds herself in the midst of several love stories during the summer before fifth grade. Emma Phineas Wilkey's moniker comes from the circumstances of her birth: under the Ferris wheel at the fairground. Her contained world, centered around her family and best friend, is filled with kindness, humor, and singular personalities, while the indeterminate late-20th-century small-town setting feels like a safe place from which to observe heartbreak and loss. Ferris' architect father and her pragmatic mother, on break from teaching high school math, anchor her home life, along with Pinky, her hilariously ferocious 6-year-old sister, and Charisse, her grandmother, who claims to have seen an unhappy ghost in their big old house. Ferris' best friend, Billy Jackson, whom she's loved since kindergarten, hears the music of the world: "The whole world is singing all the time." Ferris, serious and sensitive, is attuned to the ways that the vocabulary words they learned in Mrs. Mielk's fourth grade class describe moments in her life. DiCamillo's gift for conveying an entire person and world in a few brushstrokes of storytelling provides depth and quiet magic to this account of an eventful summer in which a ghost is appeased, an outlaw (Pinky) is somewhat reformed, and an uncle and aunt are reconciled. Ferris experiences two surprising moments of transcendence and becomes aware of the ways love suffuses everything. Characters are cued white. Tenderly resonant and memorable. (Fiction. 8-12) Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Excerpts
Excerpts
It was the summer before Emma Phineas Wilkey (who everyone called Ferris) went into the fifth grade. It was the summer that the ghost appeared to Charisse, the summer that Ferris's sister, Pinky Wilkey, devoted herself to becoming an outlaw, and the summer that Uncle Ted left Aunt Shirley and moved into the Wilkey basement to paint a history of the world. It was the summer that Ferris's best friend, Billy Jackson, played a song called "Mysterious Barricades" over and over again on the piano. Billy Jackson loved music. The very first sentence he had ever spoken to Ferris was "I hear piano music in my head all the time, and, I wonder, would it be all right if I held on to your hand?" They were standing in Mrs. Bleeker's kindergarten classroom. Squares of sunlight were shining on the wood floors, and Ferris gave her hand to Billy Jackson while he continued to explain to her about the piano music in his head. Billy's hand was sweating. His glasses were attached to his head with a strap, and Ferris knew almost immediately, from that very first moment, that she didn't want to ever lose hold of Billy Jackson. She said, "There's a piano at our house. You can come over and play it whenever you want." It was a big, old house, the house where Ferris lived. Ferris had her own room. So did Pinky, and so did Ferris's parents. Charisse, Ferris's grandmother, had her own room, too. That was where the ghost showed up--at the threshold of Charisse's room. "Darling," Charisse said to Ferris, "this ghost! She just stands there in the doorway and stares at me with the most mournful expression." "What does she look like?" said Ferris. "Besides mournful?" "She's wearing a long dress. She has a handkerchief in her hand, and she wrings and squeezes it. Clearly, she is in despair over something. She is very unhappy, darling." "Are there happy ghosts?" said Ferris. "I would like you to know that Boomer sees her, too. In case you are inclined to doubt my sanity." Boomer was the dog. He was part sheepdog and part German shepherd and also, according to Ferris's father, part woolly mammoth. No one was sure, really, what kind of dog Boomer was, only that he was enormous and furry. "Boomer refuses to enter the room if he sees her standing there," said Charisse. "He is a very perceptive dog." "But why is the ghost here?" asked Ferris. She was sitting in the window seat of Charisse's room, looking out into the backyard. Ferris figured that she had spent more than half of her time on earth in Charisse's room--talking to her grandmother, listening to her, playing gin rummy with her, and reading to her from the Bible and also from a battered paperback copy of Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass. "I mean," said Ferris, "what do you think the ghost wants?" "I have absolutely no idea," said Charisse. "I am utterly baffled by all of it, darling." Boomer was asleep on the rose-patterned carpet by Charisse's bed. He was moving his paws, breathing heavily, dreaming of chasing something. The one time Boomer had actually managed to catch something (a baby squirrel), he had dropped it immediately and crept into the house with his tail between his legs--devastated by shame and regret. His was a gentle soul. That was what Charisse said about Boomer. "His is a gentle soul." "Are you afraid of her?" said Ferris. "Are you afraid of the ghost?" "When you've lived as long as I have," said Charisse, who was seventy-three years old, "you are not afraid of ghosts." "What are you afraid of, then?" said Ferris. "Indignities," said Charisse. "I don't understand," said Ferris. "Isn't that wonderful?" said Charisse. "I'm so pleased that you don't understand." It was late afternoon, and Charisse was in bed. "Why are you still in bed?" asked Ferris. "I don't feel well, darling, and that is all I want to say about that. I would ask you not to question me to death, as is your wont." Ferris was Charisse's favorite person on the planet. No one denied it--not Charisse, not Ferris, not anybody in the whole household. Charisse was the person who had caught Ferris when she entered the world--literally caught her. Charisse had been on her knees in the dirt of the fairground, and she had been the one who had seen Ferris first. She said she recognized her at first sight. "Welcome, darling." That is what she had said to Ferris, and Ferris swore that she could remember it--entering the world, seeing the blue sky, seeing Charisse's face smiling down at her. "It's a love story," Charisse said whenever she told the story of Ferris being born. "But then, every story is a love story. Or every good story is a love story." "You can't possibly remember it," said Ferris's mother that evening. "I barely remember it. You know what your grandmother does? She dramatizes everything. No, she romanticizes everything. Going into labor on a patch of dirt at the fairground is not romantic, I can tell you that much. Hand me the sponge, will you?" Ferris and her mother were at the kitchen table. Her mother was pasting Green Stamps into an S&H Green Stamps book. She was working on filling enough books to get a toaster oven. Ferris's mother was practical. She was a pragmatist. She taught high school math. "Attempting to teach math to a roomful of teenagers on a daily basis leaves no room for romantic notions," her mother often said. "I am a pragmatist through and through." Was Ferris a pragmatist or a romantic? She didn't know. But sometimes, right before she fell asleep, she saw blue sky--the blue sky that she remembered from being born--and she saw Charisse smiling at her, her face lit up and beautiful. Ferris believed that she'd recognized Charisse as soon as she had laid eyes on her. Just the same way she'd recognized Billy Jackson from the first day she took his hand. "Every story is a love story," Ferris said out loud to herself that night when she was in bed. The windows in her room were open. The crickets were singing. Boomer had thrown himself across her feet. He was snoring. It was hot having a woolly mammoth draped across her feet, but Ferris was worried about Charisse not feeling well, and she was worried about the ghost--what did she want? Why was she only appearing to Charisse? And so Ferris was grateful to have Boomer there, anchoring her to the bed, the house, the world. "I am ten years old," Ferris said into the darkness. Ten seemed like a significant number of years. Ten seemed like the age when Ferris might start to understand some things. "I am ten years old, and every story is a love story." Above her, above the house, the stars were shining, wheeling their way across the sky. Boomer snored. The crickets sang. It sounded like maybe the stars were singing, too. Ferris closed her eyes. She listened. Every story is a love story, the whole world seemed to be singing. Every good story is a love story. Excerpted from Ferris by Kate DiCamillo All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
