- Hardcover: 144 pages
- Publisher: Walker & Co (April 1992)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0802781500
- ISBN-13: 978-0802781505
- Product Dimensions: 23.1 x 15 x 2 cm
- Shipping Weight: 408 g
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Product Details |
Product Description
From School Library Journal
Grade 3-6-- Is a talking opossum who gives away good luck possible or ``Impossumble?'' Rianne is old enough, at ten, to be skeptical, but the creature she and her little sister help escape from the pet farm certainly does speak, and the family does run into good fortune. Only later does the Impossumble (a.k.a., the opossum) explain that laws of luck are the same as laws of physics--for every bit of good luck there is an equal and opposite bit of misfortune. Thus, when Rianne's father is held hostage by terrorists, she knows that she has to start negotiations with the animal. This pleasant cautionary tale has sparks of intrigue similar to Norton's The Borrowers (HBJ, 1953), or O'Brien's Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH (Atheneum, 1971), with an idea close to that in the Stermans' Too Much Magic (Lippincott, 1987), but sadly, does not fulfill its promise. The absolute magic of the Impossumble's tiny bedroom in the basement is lost to readers when she decides to move instead to the woods. Although the human characters are engaging, pleasant people facing real, everyday situations in the midst of ``maybe'' magic, their story is not compelling. Fodder only for the most voracious of fantasy readers. --Jody McCoy, Casady School, Oklahoma City
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Kirkus Reviews
Coming from an overseas posting, Rianne, Shannon, and Abe find their new neighborhood--a plastic community a stone's throw from the State Department, where their father is chief of security--impossibly stodgy. Then they meet an ordinary-looking opossum who talks and gives away luck that's quite real, as Rianne learns when she buys a winning lottery ticket. Unfortunately, the good luck is always countered by bad--a scary automobile accident, a tree falling through the roof; when the bad luck escalates to having their father taken hostage by terrorists, the kids swear off further opossum meddling. After all, the animal couldn't even save her own woods from destruction. So much doesn't add up here that the book doesn't quite make it as humor or suspense: e.g., though the opossum talks, she insists on dumb-animal status; and the bad luck is far out of proportion to the good. The moral seems to be either: Don't mess with Mother Nature, or press your luck--or make bad puns like ``impossumble.'' (Fiction. 10+) -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
5.0 out of 5 stars (1 customer review)
1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Awesome Opossum Uses Its Claws Some!, July 14 1999
By A Customer - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: An Impossible Summer (Hardcover)
Consider the opossum -- easily the most underestimated and least-regarded of all God's creatures. Yet, beneath its unprepossessing exterior beats the heart of a mighty warrior, and its beady little eyes give little hint of the shrewd intellect that hides behind them! This rollicking adventure yarn is the story of a single mighty marsupial, and the impact his fur-covered, vaguely rat-like presence had on three lonely kids in the suburbs of Washington, DC.Washington, DC, you say? Surely the surrounding municipalities are naught but soulless concrete and macadam expanses! Opossums are creatures of the wilderness, where they roam free and untrammeled by the laws of Man! How could such suburban terrain offer any home to the plucky pouched perambulators in question? Easy! Unassuming in mien and strangely loveable in demeanor, the awesome opossum is tough, tenacious and territorial. The species arouse in South America (where life was and is cheap), along with other pouched compadres, even as placental counterparts evolved in North America. When the land bridge of Central America rose from the waters, the placental mammals migrated South and wiped out the indigenous species -- except for the mighty opossum. With its nightmarish claws and near-prehensile tale, not to mention its cunning strategy of feigning faint ("playing `possum"), the white-furred wonders soon carved out a place for themselves in the North American food chain (somewhere above cat food and below hillbillies). Now, no patch of park bigger than my mother's apron is free of the cuddly night-crawlers!
This book is a lot of fun. It reminds me of E. Nesbit's work, and all those English kids novels about young ones who have adventures while their parents are off crushing rebellions in India or something. I wish that there had been more of the talking opossum in it, but that's probably because I just can't get enough of those whisker-snouted wayfarers.
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