From: Monica R. Edinger <edinger>
Date: Thu, 07 Feb 2002 14:03:09 -0500

I am a big Polly Horvath fan having read aloud The Trolls to fourth graders several times and Everything on a Waffle last year for the first time as well. The kids loved Primrose, the quirky characters, the episodic quality (less pronounced than in The Trolls), the just-a-bit-off situations (a gym next door with ghosts just maybe playing basketball all night?) and the recipes, of course. (Has anyone tried them for real; the reasonable ones, that is?) The book is full of tragedies, but somehow they don't seem so dreadful, just because of Horvath's prose filtered through Primrose's point of view. Burned down houses, missing ends of digits? What does that matter when you are holding out against hope (and against almost every other person in town) that your parents are still alive. I have no idea how kids respond to Horvath as independent readers, but I can attest to their delight in both books when they are read aloud.

I wonder, however, if the varying responses to Everything on a Waffle is a matter of proclivity for slightly offbeat and black humor. Last week Jack Gantos spoke at my school and, while the bulk of our 4th graders were roaring as he told of the deaths of his less-than-brilliant childhood pets, Bobo I, II, and III, one child was led out in tears, completely unable to find the dumb dogs' deaths even remotely funny. So it may well be with Polly Horvath.

Monica

Monica Edinger The Dalton School New York NY edinger at dalton.org monicaedinger at yahoo.com
Received on Thu 07 Feb 2002 01:03:09 PM CST