Books4fun

I must start out by confessing that this is one of my all-time favorite books. Yes, A Girl Named Zippy is yet another memoir of a poor family in the hinterlands of Indiana, but this one is set apart by the author’s skill. You know how most books about childhood are told from the safety of adulthood? The stories can be funny, sure, but there is a definite distance between where the storyteller is and where the storyteller was. Haven Kimmel transcends this gap by making you look at things through her eyes as they were at the time. The story landed me solidly back in a giggly 9-year-old mentality, whether I wanted to be there or not. Example: “Everyone around me was flat-out in love with [Jesus], and who wouldn’t be? He was good with animals, he loved his mother, and he wasn’t afraid of blind people.”

My favorite story is the one where she starts out by eating a whole bunch of carrots (that’s all I’ll say about that). I also enjoyed the follow-up book She Got Up Off the Couch: And Other Heroic Acts from Mooreland, Indiana and I’m looking forward to The Used World, which comes out this month.

-Recommended by Sara, Reference Librarian