Sweet, funny, uplifting

books:


	• A Girl Named Zippy: Growing Up Small in Mooreland Indiana (Today Show Book Club #3) Haven Kimmel Broadway, 2002 - 282 pages average customer review:based on 200 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Really well written

Well written memoir. I think most people who read this book get the fact that though she was loved by her parents, her childhood was far less than perfect. I for one did not read this book and think "wow, what a refreshing a wonderful memoir of a lovely and decent childhood". It was cleverly written from a child's perspective so that we adult readers would read enough into what she was writing to understand that though her childhood was, in many ways, quite dysfunctional and disturbing at times, the author herself saw life from a different perspective. This could have easily been written as a 'woe is me' kind of memoir but it would have been far less interesting and real. I appreciate her humor and positive light. There were many times when I related entirely to what she was writing (I too grew up in a dysfunctional family in a very small town in Indiana) and many times I laughed right out loud. I really enjoyed this book.

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Sweet, funny, uplifting

This was the first book in the memoir genre that I have read, and I really enjoyed it. Zippy is told from the author's childhood voice, is full of humor, and takes you back to when you were a kid having the same thoughts. I'm amazed that someone could remember so much about their childhood and tell the story in such a fun way. It's a quick, easy read and will leave you feeling uplifted! I also recommend it's sequel - She Got Up Off The Couch...

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Animal Lovers Beware

In the first 75 pages of this warm and fuzzy book, the following happens (and not much else): a piglet dies, a dog dies of worms, a hen and rooster are dragged off by dogs, the dogs get shot, a cat is stolen and starved in a basement, oh, and a rabbit has its ears stapled to a fence and its head chopped off. One would expect plenty of death on a farm but there's no farm in this story. Just a backyard.

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Most Cleverly Written

How does Kimmel do it? She grips the reader into a tale (based on her very skewed childhood memory) and then she throws the reader a curve ball. Sometimes, it's the very last sentence of a memory or the last word. It is that insightful nugget of information that allows the reader to know so much more about the situation than the child-storyteller does.

I laughed out loud through so much of this book, and when I was done, I wanted more, so I picked up She Got Up Off the Couch. It's a book you will want to share.

Deserted-Island Read

ZIPPY makes the short list of books I would take on a deserted island; it makes my heart sing. It makes me want to write.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

When Haven Kimmel was born in 1965, Mooreland, Indiana, was a sleepy little hamlet of three hundred people. Nicknamed "Zippy" for the way she would bolt around the house, this small girl was possessed of big eyes and even bigger ears. In this witty and lovingly told memoir, Kimmel takes readers back to a time when small-town America was caught in the amber of the innocent postwar period?people helped their neighbors, went to church on Sunday, and kept barnyard animals in their backyards.

Laced with fine storytelling, sharp wit, dead-on observations, and moments of sheer joy, Haven Kimmel's straight-shooting portrait of her childhood gives us a heroine who is wonderfully sweet and sly as she navigates the quirky adult world that surrounds Zippy.

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