Hokey Pokey

Review by Booklist Review

In the place called Hokey Pokey, the kids Newbies, Snotsippers, Gapergums, Sillynillys, Longspitters, Groundhog Chasers, and Big Kids are everywhere, doing what kids do: streaking, leaping, chasing, shrieking, hokeypokeying, and more. In short, playing. Yes, kids are everywhere, but there isn't an adult anywhere except for the Hokey Pokey Man, who brings square snowball treats to the kids. It's here in this eccentric place that Jack, a popular Big Kid, awakens one morning to hear the whispered words It's time. Could this have something to do with the story all the kids know, in which The Kid announces, I am going away ? Readers will find out as they follow Jack throughout one memorable day of discoveries, including the knowledge of something called tomorrow. Spinelli has written a tender, bittersweet story of coming of age and the changes and leave-takings it involves. In its spirit and style, the novel evokes Ray Bradbury's sometimes sentimental, nostalgic work, especially Dandelion Wine. Spinelli remains his own man, however, and his latest sui generis novel is sure to delight his many fans. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: An extensive outreach campaign that ranges from a designated hashtag to a national author tour has put this title on the radar of readers well beyond Spinelli's already large audience.--Cart, Michael Copyright 2010 Booklist

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.

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Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

Spinelli (Jake and Lily) creates a surreal landscape reminiscent of J.M. Barrie's Never Land in this poignant celebration of childhood exuberance. Don't bother looking for adults in Hokey Pokey, where boys and girls dine on flavored ice and spend their days watching cartoons, playing cowboy games, and using their bicycles as trusty steeds. Jack's bike, Scramjet, is the most coveted of all, and one day it's stolen by his archenemy, Jubilee. This marks the first of a series of unsettling events that give Jack, a boy on the brink of adolescence, the eerie impression that "things have shifted." It isn't just that his tattoo, the mark of all residents, is fading; something deep inside him is pulling him away from familiar landmarks, friends, enemies, and routines. Spinelli's story will set imaginations spinning and keep readers guessing about Jack's fate and what Hokey Pokey is all about (so to speak). The ending is both inevitable and a risk (it invokes one of the more cliched tropes in literature and film), but Spinelli's dizzying portrait of life in Hokey Pokey will keep readers rapt. Ages 10-up. (Jan.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

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Review by School Library Journal Review

Gr 5-7-Hokey Pokey is a place where children live and rule themselves, riding bicycles like horses, watching cartoons on huge outdoor screens, throwing tantrums and getting hugged, all without an adult in sight. Their lives are almost pure joy as they dance the eponymous dance, savor the eponymous frozen treat, and listen to The Story of the Kid through little shells they carry in their pockets. Jack is their hero and ringleader, dealing with bully Harold the Destroyer, teaching Kiki lessons in sports and Lopez lessons in life, until the day things begin to change. Jack wakes to find that his beloved bike, Scramjet, has been commandeered by Jubilee, whom he despises because she's a girl. Answering his Tarzan cry of despair, Amigos LaJo and Dusty race to his side and notice before he does that Jack's stomach tattoo, given to all children once they're out of diapers, is starting to disappear. Fighting against the realization that Jack is going to leave them, they lure him into one last bike roundup, roping him and tying him down until Jubilee releases him, recognizing that he cannot resist the pull away from all of them toward the Forbidden Hut and the Train, and into The Story. Using elements of myth, allegory, fantasy, and not-quite science fiction, Spinelli has skillfully combined a stream-of-consciousness narrative with delicious inventive language to create a vivid, dreamlike world. This unforgettable coming-of-age story will resonate with tween readers and take its rightful place beside the author's Maniac Magee (Little, Brown, 1990) and Louis Sachar's Holes (Farrar, 1998).-Marie Orlando, formerly at Suffolk Cooperative Library System, Bellport, NY (c) Copyright 2013. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

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Review by Horn Book Review

A cartoony map is the reader's entree into the world of Hokey Pokey. Landmarks include "Forbidden Hut" (which looks like a garden shed), "Gorilla Hill" (a mound of dirt), and a statue in the center labeled "The Kid." But Hokey Pokey is no ordinary locale: one patch of ground is labeled "Cartoons," another "Tantrums," and a disembodied fun-house clown called "Tattooer" looks on. It's a Neverland-like world peopled by "Newbies," "Snotsippers," "Sillynillies," and "Gappergums" (i.e., children). The story's main character is Jack, a "Big Kid" revered by Hokey Pokeyans for his self-confidence, his kindness to the little guy, and taming of his "stallion" (read: bicycle), a beauty called Scramjet. At the start of the book, Jack's mortal enemy, Jubilee, has stolen Scramjet. What's worse, she paints the bike yellow, and she and her friend "girl it up." Jack is furious, but he's also restless; something is telling him that things have changed -- that he has changed, and outgrown bicycle-wrangling and boy/girl rivalries. Spinelli's allegory of Childhood Lost, while universal in theme, can be alienating in its improvisatory nature, with stream-of-consciousness, run-on sentences, non sequiturs, and made-up words. Some readers may thrill to the narrative style, just as others will find it impenetrable. The Hokey Pokey setting isn't idyllic -- a bully called The Destroyer is straight out of Spinelli central casting -- but the story has a nostalgic feel, for a time when children were hooked on Looney Toons and unsupervised make-believe play with the neighbor kids was the norm. elissa gershowitz (c) Copyright 2013. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

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Review by Kirkus Book Review

If childhood were a place. In the adultless land of Hokey Pokey, a dry, sandy environment reminiscent of the Southwest, children arrive when they've outgrown diapers and receive a ticklish tattoo of an eye on their abdomens. At midday they line up for a serving of hokey pokey, an ice treat in any flavor imaginable. The rest of their day is spent playing, watching a giant television with nonstop cartoons or riding bicycles, which are horselike creatures that roll in herds and can buck their owners off at will. In this inventive, modern fable, Jack awakens with a bad feeling that's realized when his legendary Scramjet bike is stolen by Jubilee, a girl no less, and his tattoo has started to fade. As he searches for his bike and the reason why "[t]he world is rushing at him, confusing him, alarming him," he recalls The Story about The Kid who grew up and hinted at tomorrow, an unrecognizable place to children. With nods to J.M. Barrie, Dr. Seuss and Philip Pullman, Newbery Medalist Spinelli crafts stunning turns of phrase as Jack "unfunks" and tries to "dehappen" the day's events. While reluctantly accepting his growing up, Jack brings Hokey Pokey's bully to justice, suddenly finds Jubilee an interesting companion and prepares his Amigos for his imminent departure. A masterful, bittersweet recognition of coming-of-age. (Fiction. 10-13, adult)]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

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All night long Seven Sisters whisper and giggle and then, all together, they rush Orion the Hunter and tickle him, and Orion the Hunter laughs so hard he shakes every star in the sky, not to mention Mooncow, who loses her balance and falls--puh-loop!--into Big Dipper, which tip-tip-tips and dumps Mooncow into Milky Way, and Mooncow laughs and splashes and rolls on her back and goes floating down down down Milky Way, and she laughs a great moomoonlaugh and kicks at a lavender star and the star goes shooting across the sky, up the sky and down the sky, a lavender snowfireball down the highnight down . . .  down . . . down . . .  down . . . Today Jack . . . to Hokey Pokey . . . . . . where it lands, a golden bubble now, a starborn bead, lands and softly pips upon the nose of sleeping Jack and spills a whispered word: it's and then another: time Something is wrong. He knows it before he opens his eyes. He looks. His bike is gone! Scramjet! What more could he have done? He parked it so close that when he shut his eyes to sleep, he could smell the rubber of the tires, the grease on the chain. And still she took it. His beloved Scramjet. He won't say her name. He never says her name, only her kind, sneers it to the morning star: "Girl." He runs to the rim of the bluff, looks up the tracks, down the tracks. There she is, ponytail flying from the back of her baseball cap, the spokes of the wheels--his wheels--plum-spun in the thistledown dawn. He waves his fist, shouts from the bluff: "I'll get you!" The tracks curve, double back. He can cut her off! He sneakerskis down the gullied red-clay slope, leaps the tracks, plunges into the jungle and runs--phloot!--into a soft, vast, pillowy mass. Oh no! Not again! He only thinks this. He cannot say it because the front half of himself, including his face, is buried in the hippopotamoid belly of Wanda's monster. This has happened before. He wags his head hard, throws it back, and--ttthok!--his face comes free. "Wan-daaa!" he bellows. "Wake up!" Wanda stirs in a bed of mayapples. "Wanda!" The moment Wanda awakes, her monster vanishes in a puff of apricots, dropflopping Jack to the ground. He's up in an instant and off again. Every other step is a leap over a sleeper. All is quiet save thunder beyond the trees and the thump of the sun bumping the underside of the horizon. He hoprocks across the creek, past the island of Forbidden Hut, and pulls up huffing at the far loop end of the tracks. He looks up, looks down. Nothing. He slumps exhausted to the steel rail. He stares at his sneaker tops. He gasps, reflects. She said she would do it. "I'm going to take--" No, to be accurate, she didn't say take, she said ride: "I'm going to ride your bike." And who knows? Maybe if she had said it nicely . . . maybe if she wasn't a girl. But she is a girl and she said it with that snaily smirk, but there was no way she was ever coming within ten long spits of his bike. But she did. And he hates her. He hates her for taking the thing he loves most in this world. But maybe even more, he hates her for being right. He pushes himself up from the rail. Once more he casts forlorn eyes up and down the tracks that no train travels. He cries out: "Scramjet!" This is too painful to bear alone. From the black tarpit of despair he rips his Tarzan yell and hurls it into the jungle and over the creek and across the dreamlands of Hokey Pokey. Excerpted from Hokey Pokey by Jerry Spinelli All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

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