Reading Time: 1 Min.
Credit…Daniel Salmieri It is universally acknowledged that each generation of young people believes it has it worse than previous generations. But today’s kids — who’ve weathered a global pandemic, an existential climate catastrophe that feels more when than if, and TikTok — might hold a unique claim to this unenviable brag. Two wonderful new novels underscore this, allowing anxious readers to travel vicariously to simpler times. It’s not entirely clear what era 10-year-old Emma Phineas Wilkey, the protagonist of Kate DiCamillo’s latest balm-for-the-soul of a novel, lives in. Let’s call it DiCamillandia, a liminal space devoid of modern headaches like the internet, populated by quirky, caring relatives and neighbors, a charming dog who gives Winn-Dixie a run for his money, and ghosts. The kind of place where a girl is born at the fair (into the waiting arms of a beloved grandmother named Charisse) in the shadow of a Ferris wheel, which earns both Emma Phineas and the book the name “Ferris.” “‘It’s a love story,’ Charisse said whenever she told the story of Ferris being born. ‘But then, every story is a love story. Or every good story is a love story.’” A fine thesis for every book DiCamillo — a two-time Newbery medalist, for “The Tale of Despereaux” and “Flora & Ulysses” — has written. And FERRIS (Candlewick, 240 pp., $18.99, ages 8 to 12) is full of love, if not tremendously busy with plot. Its titular heroine is entangled in various affairs: acting as the go-between for her estranged aunt and uncle, dealing with her felonious little sister, receiving a series of unfortunate hairdos. When Charisse discovers that the resident ghost needs the home’s chandelier lit to win back her spectral husband, she enlists Ferris to help. Any novel set in DiCamillandia will have a vein of melancholy running through it. Mrs. Mielk, a favorite teacher of Ferris and her best friend, the quietly loyal Billy Jackson, sobs alone at a restaurant, bereft because of the loss of her husband … bereft being one of the many “Mielk vocabulary words” defined in these pages (the book […]
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