The Applewhites' over-the-top personalities mark them as literary kin of Helen Cresswell's Bagthorpes. Quirky characters, from the cub reporter to the visiting guru, add to the offbeat humor. He develops a loyal following consisting of an active four-year-old and an overweight basset hound, and his transformation is complete once he becomes enmeshed in the family's production of The Sound of Music. Jake is left largely to his own devices, since the family doesn't believe in telling their charges what or when to study.
This extended family forms what a visiting reporter christens an "artistic dynasty," with various creative endeavors absorbing the adults' time and attention. Jake Semple, 13, has been expelled from a long line of schools before coming to the Applewhites to be homeschooled. In this laugh-out-loud novel, a young teen on the fast track to the juvenile detention center suddenly finds himself living in rural North Carolina with the outrageously eccentric Applewhite clan.
0 kommentar(er)
