- Hardcover: 128 pages
- Publisher: Groundwood Books Ltd (Jan 28 2011)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 1554980852
- ISBN-13: 978-1554980857
- Product Dimensions: 19.3 x 13.2 x 1.5 cm
- Shipping Weight: 249 g
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #103,581 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
|
||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||||
Product Details |
Product Description
Review
...warm and cheerful and would be welcomed by anyone with a musical bent... (Sal's Fiction Addiction 20110304)
...[a] heartfelt novel... (Sean Dixon Quill & Quire 20110501)
...this sweet, quirky little book hits all the right notes. Highly recommended. (Kim Aippersbach CM Magazine 20110630)
This is a touching and fresh story whose lightness and brevity will engage and empower young readers. (Aileen Wortley Canadian Children's Book News 20110214)
There is much that parents and their kids can share in the novel, a quality not easily found in books aimed at adolescents. (Norman Ravvin The Canadian Jewish News 20110215)
This bittersweet novel has just the right touch of wit and creativity to catch and keep the attention of young discerning readers. Thoroughly entwined into the novel is an unusual twist on the economics concept of wants versus needs that will encourage readers to think about what brings true happiness. (Rutgers University Project on Economics and Children 20110701)
...a low-key charmer. (Kirkus Reviews 20110312)
... Fagan presents a sweet, quiet, and neatly packaged tale that emphasizes the importance of hard work and following your dreams in the face of adversity. (Rita Meade School Library Journal )
This has the spirit and cheer of comic melodrama, its fun coming as much from Fagan's breezy asides as from the plot. (Deirdre Baker Toronto Star )
...[a] heartfelt novel... (Sean Dixon Quill & Quire 20110501)
...this sweet, quirky little book hits all the right notes. Highly recommended. (Kim Aippersbach CM Magazine 20110630)
This is a touching and fresh story whose lightness and brevity will engage and empower young readers. (Aileen Wortley Canadian Children's Book News 20110214)
There is much that parents and their kids can share in the novel, a quality not easily found in books aimed at adolescents. (Norman Ravvin The Canadian Jewish News 20110215)
This bittersweet novel has just the right touch of wit and creativity to catch and keep the attention of young discerning readers. Thoroughly entwined into the novel is an unusual twist on the economics concept of wants versus needs that will encourage readers to think about what brings true happiness. (Rutgers University Project on Economics and Children 20110701)
...a low-key charmer. (Kirkus Reviews 20110312)
... Fagan presents a sweet, quiet, and neatly packaged tale that emphasizes the importance of hard work and following your dreams in the face of adversity. (Rita Meade School Library Journal )
This has the spirit and cheer of comic melodrama, its fun coming as much from Fagan's breezy asides as from the plot. (Deirdre Baker Toronto Star )
Product Description
Jeremiah Birnbaum is stinking rich. He lives in a house with nine bathrooms, a games room, an exercise room, an indoor pool, a hot tub, a movie theater, a bowling alley and a tennis court. His parents, a former hotdog vendor and window cleaner who made it big in dental floss, make sure Jeremiah goes to the very best private school, and that he takes lessons in all the things he will need to know how to do as an accomplished and impressive young man. Etiquette lessons, ballroom dancing, watercolor painting. And, of course, classical piano. Jeremiah complies, because he wants to please his parents. But one day, by chance, he hears the captivating strains of a different kind of music — the strums, plucks and rhythms of a banjo. It’s music that stirs something in Jeremiah’s dutiful little soul, and he is suddenly obsessed. And when his parents forbid him to play one, he decides to learn anyway — even if he has to make the instrument himself.
Inside This Book
(Learn More)
Suggested Tags from Similar Products(What's this?)Be the first one to add a relevant tag (keyword that's strongly related to this product)
|
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Customer Reviews
|
There are no customer reviews yet on Amazon.ca
|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
5.0 out of 5 stars (2 customer reviews)
5.0 out of 5 stars
Boy with a Passion, Jan 9 2012
A Kid's Review - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Banjo Of Destiny (Hardcover)
Written by 11 yr. old son:In Banjo of Destiny by Cary Fagan, Jeremiah Birnbaum is a rich kid with everything he could ever want. He has a tennis court, swimming pool and private bowling alley. He has three walk-in closets... one just for toys. His house has an elevator! But, he thinks his life is "one expensive nightmare." His best friend, Luella, who does not come from a wealthy family, has the freedom that he doesn't have. While he has a list of things to do, she gets to decide what she wants to be and what she wants to do, even what she wears. While she gets to go directly home after school, he has to take etiquette, ballroom, dancing, golf, painting and piano lessons.
At school, once a year, everyone has to run a cross-country race. Jeremiah is one of the slowest runners and Luella is one of the fastest, but Luella stays with him because she is his friend. This year, Luella suggests a shortcut. As they're walking across a field, they hear music. They go closer for a look and find an African American man playing the bluegrass banjo on the front porch of an abandoned house. Jeremiah hears it and feels as if the music is alive. He had never heard anything like it before.
Inspired, when Jeremiah gets home, he asks his parents if he can buy a banjo. "I have got more than enough money in my own bank account. In fact, I've got enough to buy 100 banjos." But, his parents say no, "It's not sophisticated enough." His parents, who made their money by inventing automatic dental floss dispensers, wanted Jeremiah to grow up "well-bred," because they hadn't had the same opportunities.
Out of character for him, because he doesn't normally disobey his parents, he decides to build a banjo. "Your parents didn't forbid you to make a banjo, did they?" asks Luella.
He starts listening to banjo music by various artists; he watches a recorded how-to-play-banjo lesson; and with the help of a few friends and teachers, builds a banjo using materials he finds.
Banjo of Destiny is an inspiring story about a boy who discovers his passion and follows it. He has to fight against his parents' perception of not only the banjo, but of what they want of him. Even though I'm not rich, like him, I could feel sympathy for Jeremiah and identify with how much he wanted to play the banjo. I think anybody who likes the banjo would like this book.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Rutgers University Project on Economics and Children, Mar 1 2011
By Yana V. Rodgers "Econkids at Rutgers University" - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Banjo Of Destiny (Hardcover)
Jeremiah Birnbaum's parents hailed from extremely modest backgrounds, with Mr. Birnbaum washing store windows for a living and Mrs. Birnbaum toiling away as a hotdog vendor. When the two of them met, fell in love, and came up with the idea of selling an automated dental-floss dispenser, they struck it rich. So rich, in fact, that they now lived in a castle that had everything one could imagine under its roof, including temperature-sensitive floors, a movie theater, an art gallery, a bowling alley, and an exercise room complete with an oval track.Hence Jeremiah lacked nothing in the way of material comforts. He also attended an elite private school, and his afternoons and weekends were filled with all sorts of lessons, from piano to ballroom dance, that his parents thought necessary to help him become a successful young man. All these privileges, however, did not make Jeremiah happy. He may have wanted for nothing, but he needed something to stir his soul. Unbelievably, that something turned out to be playing a banjo, a discovery that surprised Jeremiah so much that he even overrode his parents' objections to this unsophisticated instrument by trying to make his own.
This bittersweet novel has just the right touch of wit and creativity to catch and keep the attention of young discerning readers. Thoroughly entwined into the novel is an unusual twist on the economics concept of wants versus needs that will encourage readers to think about what brings true happiness.
Listmania!
Look for similar items by category
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
