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Richie's Picks: WHAT HAPPENED ON FOX STREET  by Tricia Springstubb, 
HarperCollins/Balzer + Bray, August 2010, 224p., ISBN:  978-0-06-198635-2    

"If you hear that same sweet song again will you know  why?
Anyone who sings a tune so sweet is passing by.
Laugh in the sunshine, sing;
Cry in the dark, fly through the night"
-- Hunter/Garcia, "Bird Song"
 
Almost-ten-year-old Mo (Maureen Jewel) Wren is a  thinker.  And this summer 
there will be quite a nest full of  surprises and potential changes to 
think about.
 
"What was stupid about trying hard, about taking a risk, about  wishing to 
fly?  Everything, that's what!  It was worse than stupid to  gamble with 
gravity.  Stay put, stay on the ground, stay  safe!"
 
 
Mo has spent her entire life on Fox Street: five houses  
shoulder-to-shoulder on either side of a road in northern Ohio, whose dead  end 
overlooks an 
expansive, forested ravine.  Mo has had to  spend the last three of these 
years motherless.  And when past changes  have had such a devastating impact 
upon one's young life, you can come  to fear more of them -- like when your 
best friend arrives for the summer  and you discover that she seems to 
suddenly be thinking and acting  differently.
 

 
 
"Sometimes change comes at you like a broadside  accident.
There is chaos in the order, random things you can't  prevent."
-- Joni Mitchell, "Good Friends"


 
Mo's best friend is Mercedes Jasmine Walcott who  lives downstate during 
the school year and then travels to Fox Street  to spend summers with the 
ailing maternal grandmother who lives across  the street from the Wren house.  
But this could well be the  friends' last summer together here.  
 
Mercedes' mother Monette, who was raised on Fox Street --  a gifted child 
in, what was, the first family of color to live in the  neighborhood -- has 
just married for the first time and is now going to  belatedly get to achieve 
her dream of attending college.
 
"Mercedes had never known her father.  When Monette  discovered she was 
pregnant, she'd moved away from Fox Street and  never looked back.  She refused 
to even say who he was -- he was sweet and  he was gone, that was all the 
information Mercedes had.  Here was yet  one more way Merce and Mo were 
alike, beside having identical initials, and  being born the very same autumn, 
and both adoring Fox Street: They were both  half orphans."
 
Mo has a fast-moving, bottle-collecting, malapropism-spewing  little sister 
named Dottie, who is affectionately known throughout the  neighborhood as 
the Wild Child.  They have a father who  is clearly unhappy in his job with 
the municipal water  authority and is still clearly mourning the loss of his 
daughters' spirited  and absentminded mother.
 
"The cardinal broke off its song midnote, and the bird arrowed  out of 
sight.  The yard grew cemetery quiet."
 
We also meet other residents of Fox Street  including the wild, 
trouble-making Baggot boys (The oldest is actually a  sensitive skateboarder who 
clearly adores Mo.); Mrs. Petrone, who works for  the funeral parlor and does 
haircutting at her home; Mr. Duong, the fix-it  man; and Ms. Hugg, the piano 
player.
 
And then there is Mo's enigmatic, white-haired next door  neighbor, 
Gertrude Steinbott, whom Mo refers to as Starchbutt:
 
"Mrs. Steinbott whiled away her hours pruning shrubs within an  inch of 
their lives and knitting, though who all those itchy hats and scarves  could be 
for remained a mystery.  No one ever came to visit her.   Her life was 
solitary as the unplanet Pluto.
"Why was she so alone?  And so stone hearted?  Which  came first?  It was 
as hard to determine as the chicken and the egg, a  problem Mo had given some 
thought."  
 
WHAT HAPPENED ON FOX STREET is one of those great stories with  a helping 
of mystery that is so much fun to read the second  time through: Now that I'd 
seen the completed puzzle, I went back  again and laughed aloud as I 
encountered all of the clues whose  significance I missed the first time around. 
 
This is also one of those memorable stories in which the world  revolves 
around one little neighborhood.  I remember back when I was nine,  how I spent 
many contented afternoons reading about the  happenings on Klickitat 
Street.  All these years later, I still recall how  thoroughly I enjoyed being 
immersed in those tales.  Such is the  feeling I've just gotten, having had the 
pleasure of spending quality time  hanging out on Fox Street (and in the 
adjoining woods).
 
"Being a thinker was a various thing.  Sometimes you felt  like a turtle, 
with a nice, private built-in place to shelter.  Other  times, it was like 
having a bucket stuck on your head, making the world clang  and echo and never 
stop."
 
This is an absolute must-have for elementary  collections. 
 
Richie  Partington, MLIS
Richie's Picks _http://richiespicks.com_ (http://richiespicks.com/) 
BudNotBuddy@aol.com
Moderator _http://groups.yahoo.com/middle_school_lit/_ 
(http://groups.yahoo.com/middle_school_lit/) 
Moderator _http://groups.yahoo.com/group/EcolIt/_ 
(http://groups.yahoo.com/group/EcolIt/)   
_http://slisweb.sjsu.edu/people/faculty/partingtonr/partingtonr.php_ 
(http://slisweb.sjsu.edu/people/faculty/partingtonr/partingtonr.php) 

FTC NOTICE: Richie receives free books from lots of publishers who  hope he 
will Pick their books.  You can figure that any review was  written after 
reading and dog-earring a free copy received.  Richie retains  these review 
copies for his rereading pleasure and for use in his  booktalks at schools 
and  libraries.


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