Flora & Ulysses The illuminated adventures

Review by New York Times Review

when i meet a new character in a children's book, I often ask myself: Is this a child I would want to drive to a birthday party? The answer is most often a resounding no. Then along came Flora Belle Buckman, the 10-year-old star of Kate DiCamillo's madcap chapter book, "Flora and Ulysses." Unlike some of her freshas-paint fictional counterparts, Flora has gravitas. She is a self-proclaimed "natural-born cynic" with a misanthropic streak reminiscent of Harriet the Spy. She's not a grouch exactly, but she is world-weary, perhaps as a result of her parents' recent divorce. Like many a cynic, Flora is skeptical of love; but she has a passion for words, particularly those that appear inside thought bubbles. Conveniently, her mother, Phyllis, a romance novelist, is so distracted that Flora has plenty of time to immerse herself in what Phyllis refers to as "the idiotic high jinks of comics." Flora's favorites are "The Illuminated Adventures of the Amazing Incandesto!" and its companion, "Terrible Things Can Happen to You!" She lives by advice gleaned from their pages. Her mantra: "Do not hope; instead, observe." One day, while she's lost in her comic book universe - cheerfully illuminated by K.G. Campbell - Flora witnesses an amazing thing. Her neighbor, Tootie Tickham, is pulled into the yard by the power of her birthday present, a Ulysses SuperSuction, Multi-Terrain 2000X vacuum cleaner. In an uproarious mash-up, the appliance-gone-wrong ingests a squirrel, which it quickly regurgitates, minus some fur but empowered with the gift of thought and super-squirrel strength. "Holy bagumba," Flora says. Truer words have never been spoken. "Flora and Ulysses" alternates between Flora's perspective and the squirrel's, which is infused with Zen philosophy à la rodent. One snapshot: "His brain felt larger, roomier. It was as if several doors in the dark room of his self (doors he hadn't even known existed) had suddenly been flung wide. Everything was shot through with meaning, purpose, light." Flora names the squirrel Ulysses and smuggles him into her house, attracting nary a glance from her inattentive mother. Flora, caught in the purgatory of tweenhood, missing her father and fed up with her mother's nagging, finds Ulysses to be the perfect companion. He's adorable and unthreatening, and other than tapping out cryptic messages and poems on Phyllis's electric typewriter, he keeps his deep thoughts to himself. The two embark on a series of adventures together - none of them earthshatteringly exciting, but each distinguished by an emotional depth that is appropriately Joycean (and, fear not, appropriate for kids). Flora and her squirrel mostly stick close to home, where they team up with William Spiver, Tootie Tickham's blind nephew, to protect Ulysses from the now cognizant adults who want to return him to the wild. Flora is certain that Ulysses is a superhero; William is harder to convince. The tension mounts when Flora's father, George, comes to pick her up for a visit. Phyllis dispatches the pair with explicit instructions for George to put Ulysses in a sack and hit him over the head with a shovel. But first they stop at Giant Do-Nut, where the squirrel takes a flying leap out of his shoe box and into a waitress's hair. Despite the stress of not knowing whether Ulysses will outwit his arch-nemesis, Phyllis, it is fascinating to have a squirrel's eye view on the world, especially when the squirrel is a poet at heart. The smells! The doughnut selection! The wonderful imagery of sunny side up eggs ! Occasionally, reading "Flora and Ulysses" gives you that whiplash feeling of watching TV with someone who changes the channel every two seconds. The chapters are short and choppy and the antics so off-the-wall, parents looking for a peaceful bedtime story to read aloud may be surprised by how riled up young listeners get. But isn't that the fun of DiCamillo's books? In "Flora and Ulysses," longtime fans will find a happy marriage of Mercy Watson's warmth and wackiness and Edward Tulane's gentle life lessons. In Flora, they will find a girl worth knowing, and one they will remember. She is welcome in my minivan anytime. ? ELISABETH EGAN is the books editor at Glamour.

Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [September 15, 2013]

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Review by Booklist Review

*Starred Review* The story begins with a vacuum cleaner. And a squirrel. Or, to be more precise, a squirrel who gets sucked into a Ulysses Super Suction wielded by Flora's neighbor, Mrs. Tickham. The rather hairless squirrel that is spit out is not the same one that went in. That squirrel had only one thought: I'm hungry. After Flora performs CPR, the rescued squirrel, newly named Ulysses, is still hungry, but now he has many thoughts in his head. Foremost is his consideration of Flora's suggestion that perhaps he is a superhero like The Amazing Incandesto, whose comic-book adventures Flora read with her father. (Drawing on comic-strip elements, Campbell's illustrations here work wonderfully well.) Since Flora's father and mother have split up, Flora has become a confirmed and defiant cynic. Yet it is hard to remain a cynic while one's heart is opening to a squirrel who can type ( Squirtl. I am . . . born anew ), who can fly, and who adores Flora. Newbery winner DiCamillo is a master storyteller, and not just because she creates characters who dance off the pages and plots, whether epic or small, that never fail to engage and delight readers. Her biggest strength is exposing the truths that open and heal the human heart. She believes in possibilities and forgiveness and teaches her audience that the salt of life can be cut with the right measure of love. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: DiCamillo has a devoted following, plus this book has an extensive marketing campaign. That equals demand.--Cooper, Ilene Copyright 2010 Booklist

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

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Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

Newbery Medalist DiCamillo and illustrator Campbell meld prose with comics sequences in a broad comedy tinged with sadness. Bitter about her parents' divorce, Flora Buckman has withdrawn into her favorite comic book, The Amazing Incandesto! and memorized the advisories in its ongoing bonus feature, Terrible Things Can Happen to You! She puts those life-saving tips into action when a squirrel is swallowed whole by a neighbor's new vacuum cleaner, the Ulysses Super-Suction Multi-Terrain 2000X. Flora resuscitates the squirrel, christens him after the vacuum, and witnesses a superhero-like transformation: Ulysses is now uber-strong, can fly, and composes poetry. Despite supremely quirky characters and dialogue worthy of an SAT prep class, there's real emotion at the heart of this story involving two kids who have been failed by the most important people in their lives: their parents. It's into this profound vacuum that Ulysses really flies, demonstrating an unconditional love for his rescuer, trumped only perhaps by his love for food and a desire "to make the letters on the keyboard speak the truth of his heart." Ages 10-up. Author's agent: Holly McGhee, Pippin Properties. Illustrator's agent: Lori Nowicki, Painted Words. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

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Review by Horn Book Review

Ten-year-old Flora Belle Buckman's life changes when she resuscitates a squirrel after his near-death experience with her neighbor's Ulysses 2000X vacuum. Flora discovers that the incident has caused the squirrel, whom she also names Ulysses, to acquire superpowers. Despite being a "natural-born cynic," Flora's lively imagination and love of comics such as The Illuminated Adventures of the Amazing Incandesto! help her believe that Ulysses is bound for superhero greatness. There's only one problem: Ulysses's archnemesis, Flora's self-absorbed, romance novel-writing, squirrel-hating mother. Beneath the basic superhero-squirrel-friend plot, DiCamillo imbues this novel with emotion by focusing on larger life issues such as loss and abandonment, acceptance of difference, loneliness, love, overcoming fears, and the complexity of relationships. She also adds plenty of warmth and humor throughout: Flora enjoys using catch phrases and big words ("holy bagumba!"; malfeasance; capacious); Ulysses loves to eat. . .just about anything; and there is a quirky supporting cast, including Flora's absent-minded father, her eleven-year-old neighbor William Spiver, and his great-aunt, Tootie Tickham. Campbell's full-page and spot pencil illustrations accentuate the mood, while interspersed comic-book pages "illuminate" Ulysses's superhero adventures and serve as a nice visual complement to Flora's love of comics. This little girl and squirrel and their heartwarming tale could melt even the most hardened archnemesis's heart. cynthia k. ritter (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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CHAPTER ONE A Natural-Born Cynic Flora Belle Buckman was in her room at her desk. She was very busy. She was doing two things at once. She was ignoring her mother, and she was also reading a comic book entitled The Illuminated Adventures of the Amazing Incandesto! "Flora," her mother shouted, "what are you doing up there?" "I'm reading!" Flora shouted back. "Remember the contract!" her mother shouted. "Do not forget the contract!" At the beginning of summer, in a moment of weakness, Flora had made the mistake of signing a contract that said she would "work to turn her face away from the idiotic high jinks of comics and toward the bright light of true literature." Those were the exact words of the contract. They were her mother's words. Flora's mother was a writer. She was divorced, and she wrote romance novels. Talk about idiotic high jinks. Flora hated romance novels. In fact, she hated romance. "I hate romance," said Flora out loud to herself. She liked the way the words sounded. She imagined them floating above her in a comic-strip bubble; it was a comforting thing to have words I hate romance. hanging over her head. Especially negative words about romance. Flora's mother had often accused Flora of being a "natural-born cynic." Flora suspected that this was true. SHE WAS A NATURAL-BORN CYNIC WHO LIVED IN DEFIANCE OF CONTRACTS! Yep, thought Flora, that's me. She bent her head and went back to reading about the amazing Incandesto. She was interrupted a few minutes later by a very loud noise. It sounded as if a jet plane had landed in the Tickhams' backyard. "What the heck?" said Flora. She got up from her desk and looked out the window and saw Mrs. Tickham running around the backyard with a shiny, oversize vacuum cleaner. It looked like she was vacuuming the yard. That can't be, thought Flora. Who vacuums their yard? Actually, it didn't look like Mrs. Tickham knew what she was doing. It was more like the vacuum cleaner was in charge. And the vacuum cleaner seemed to be out of its mind. Or its engine. Or something. "A few bolts shy of a load," said Flora out loud. And then she saw that Mrs. Tickham and the vacuum cleaner were headed directly for a squirrel. "Hey, now," said Flora. She banged on the window. "Watch out!" she shouted. "You're going to vacuum up that squirrel!" She said the words, and then she had a strange moment of seeing them, hanging there over her head. "You're going to vacuum up that squirrel!" There is just no predicting what kind of sentences you might say, thought Flora. For instance, who would ever think you would shout, "You're going to vacuum up that squirrel!"? It didn't make any difference, though, what words she said. Flora was too far away. The vacuum cleaner was too loud. And also, clearly, it was bent on destruction. "This malfeasance must be stopped," said Flora in a deep and superheroic voice. "This malfeasance must be stopped" was what the unassuming janitor Alfred T. Slipper always said before he was transformed into the amazing Incandesto and became a towering, crime-fighting pillar of light. Unfortunately, Alfred T. Slipper wasn't present. Where was Incandesto when you needed him? Not that Flora really believed in superheroes. But still. She stood at the window and watched as the squirrel was vacuumed up. Poof. Fwump. "Holy bagumba," said Flora. CHAPTER TWO The Mind of a Squirrel Not much goes on in the mind of a squirrel. Huge portions of what is loosely termed "the squirrel brain" are given over to one thought: food. The average squirrel cogitation goes something like this: I wonder what there is to eat. This "thought" is then repeated with small variations (e.g., Where's the food? Man, I sure am hungry. Is that a piece of food? and Are there more pieces of food? ) some six or seven thousand times a day. All of this is to say that when the squirrel in the Tickhams' backyard got swallowed up by the Ulysses 2000X, there weren't a lot of terribly profound thoughts going through his head. As the vacuum cleaner roared toward him, he did not (for instance) think, Here, at last, is my fate come to meet me! He did not think, Oh, please, give me one more chance and I will be good. What he thought was Man, I sure am hungry. And then there was a terrible roar, and he was sucked right off his feet. At that point, there were no thoughts in his squirrel head, not even thoughts of food. CHAPTER THREE The Death of a Squirrel Seemingly, swallowing a squirrel was a bit much even for the powerful, indomitable, indoor/outdoor Ulysses 2000X. Mrs. Tickham's birthday machine let out an uncertain roar and stuttered to a stop. Mrs. Tickham bent over and looked down at the vacuum cleaner. There was a tail sticking out of it. "For heaven's sake," said Mrs. Tickham, "what next?" She dropped to her knees and gave the tail a tentative tug. She stood. She looked around the yard. "Help," she said. "I think I've killed a squirrel." Excerpted from Flora and Ulysses: The Illuminated Adventures by Kate DiCamillo 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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