Skip to main content

A Crooked Kind of Perfect

By

A CROOKED KIND OF PERFECT; Linda Urban; New York: Harcourt, 2007, 211pp. Fiction

Nine-year-old Zoe Elias yearns to play the piano--a baby grand, in the manner of Vladimir Horowitz. Her father responds to her musical wishes by bringing home a "wood-grained, vinyl-seated, wheeze-bag organ. The Perfectone D-60." Desperate to play just about anything, she starts up lessons with Mabelline Person (Per-saaaahn) , a ginger-ale loving instructor who sees her talent and takes her all the way to the Perfectone Perform-O-Rama,
where she plays Hits of the Seventies to universal acclaim. Throw into this already laugh-out-loud mix her agoraphobic father (holder of umpteen degrees from Living Room University), her totally unexpected new friend, Wheeler Diggs, to whom she is known as Zsa Zsa Goober, and Merv, the fast-talking organ salesman and you have a classic screwball comedy. Zoe and Wheeler both act older than their nine years, but this story is so fun, who cares?
Labels:

Comments

Carla Morris said…
I really enjoyed this book as well.
Although an organ wasn't the instrument of choice, Zoe still has a musical experience, a trophy for
competition, and in the end her dream of a piano is granted along with the celebration of having her workaholic
mom and fearful dad come together to hear her perform. The power of music!
cm
March 7, 2008 at 8:41 AM
curlyq said…
A very fun and entertaining read! I really enjoyed the characters in this book and the support network some of them form.
March 29, 2008 at 9:31 AM
2112 said…
This comment has been removed by the author.
April 9, 2008 at 10:10 AM
2112 said…
I loved the characters of this book. I loved how her dad was willing to try and taker her places despite his fears. (I especially loved how they always called a towtruck driver to give them directions back home). I also loved Wheeler's character and how it showed why we shouldn't judge people (especially kids) by how they act or dress, you never know what their home life is like.
April 9, 2008 at 10:12 AM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Review: The Factory

By
The Factory By Catherine Egan New York, NY : Scholastic Inc., 2025. Fiction. 306 pages.  Thirteen-year-old Asher Doyle has been invited to join the Factory, a secretive research facility in the desert which ostensibly extracts renewable energy from the electromagnetic fields of its young recruits. But Asher soon realizes something sinister is going on. Kids are getting sick. The adults who run the Factory seem to be keeping secrets. And the extraction process is not only painful and exhausting, but existentially troubling. Asher makes a handful of new friends who help him with an investigation that turns into a resistance, which turns into...a cliffhanger! The Factory is a page-turning sci-fi with multidimensional characters, an intriguing plot, and refreshingly straight-forward writing. Egan weaves in detail about climate crises and social unrest, making the story's dystopian setting feel rich and plausible. With its sophisticated themes and accessible storytelling, I would recomm...
Post a Comment
Read more

Review: Blood in the Water

By
Blood in the Water By Tiffany D. Jackson New York: Scholastic, 2025. Fiction. 255 pages. 12-year-old Kaylani McKinnon can't help but feel like a fish out of water. She's a Brooklyn girl spending her summer on Martha's Vineyard surrounded by wealthy family friends in their mansion. All she really wants is to stay home all summer where she her incarcerated father can easily reach her, and she can keep working to find ways to prove him innocent of fraud and embezzlement. Despite her protests, she finds herself on the island with the snooty granddaughters of her host. Soon after Kaylani's arrival, a popular teen boy is found murdered and she decides to conduct her own investigation. As she tries to discover what happened to Chadwick Cooper, Kaylani finds that not everything on Martha's Vineyard is as perfect as it appears. Thrillers for middle grade readers can be hard to find, but Tiffany D. Jackson succeeds in her first middle grade novel. A quick moving plot, tight d...
Post a Comment
Read more

National Geographic Book of Animal Poetry

By DeeDee
National Geographic Book of Animal Poetry Edited by J. Patrick Lewis National Geographic, 2012, 183 p. Poetry In this beautiful poetry collection, the National Children's Poet Laureate, J. Patrick Lewis, has teamed up with the amazing photographers at National Geographic. The result is 200 poems about animals, all illustrated with stunning nature photography.  The poems are well chosen and include rhyming, free verse, and shape poetry. Some of the poems are funny, many are contemplative and all are nicely typeset on top of the full color photographs. One of my favorites is a shape poem about flamingos, with a photograph of a flock of flamingos which seem to be standing the the shape of a flamingo (how did they do that?).  Lewis ends the collection with a brief but interesting section about writing animal poetry.  This selection is sure to turn any animal lover into a poetry lover.
Post a Comment
Read more