Review by Booklist Review
Elvis Babbitt is 10 when her mother drowns during a sleepwalking episode. Though Elvis knows how she should feel and act according to her guidance counselor's book about grieving, she and her family don't appear to be normal. While her older sister, Lizzie, deals with her grief and guilt in destructive ways, and her father dresses up in her mother's bathrobe and carries around a parrot, Elvis, unsatisfied by the abrupt ending to a vivacious life, investigates her mother's accidental death and continues researching and writing her mother's unfinished manuscript. Though returning to normalcy seems impossible, Elvis and her family realize that the greatest comfort can come only from the people around them, and they continue on with their mother forever remembered by her celebratory specialty, a rabbit-shaped cake. Though this is a story about loss, Hartnett manages to bring humor and absurdity into it without losing focus through Elvis' heartbreakingly honest voice. This is a truly terrific andoriginal novel about grief, family, and finding hope in the aftermath.--Park, Emily Copyright 2017 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
In Hartnett's winning debut, a memorable young narrator's desire for rationality wrestles with her grief. Elvis's mother once marked every milestone by baking a rabbit-shaped cake, but the year Elvis turns 10, without any fanfare, mom sleepwalks into the river and drowns. Having been told by her therapist that 18 months is the normal amount of time to grieve, Elvis, who makes sense of her world of Freedom, Ala., through research and observation, sets out to record her own grieving process. Complicating her recovery, however, is her older sister, Lizzie, who has also taken up sleepwalking, sleep eating, and even more dangerous behavior. Like many novels with child narrators, Hartnett's quirky, Southern-tinged debut relies heavily on Elvis's relative naïveté for dramatic irony. Matter-of-fact Elvis, however, is no mere victim. Her relationship with animals, in particular, rings true-she volunteers at the local zoo-and her story is affecting, exploring how a fragile but precocious girl strives to define herself after a tragedy. Agent: Katie Grimm, Don Cogdon Associates. (Mar.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
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Review by Library Journal Review
[DEBUT] In this whimsical and utterly original debut, Elvis Babbitt's mother is a sleepwalker and even a sleep-swimmer, which leads tragically to her drowning. Smart, studious Elvis can't accept the death as an accident, assiduously working her way through the medical literature to prove that her mother knew she had some sort of illness. Things aren't easy for Elvis. She has to manage her clueless dad, long on love but short on parenting skills, and a destructive older sister named Lizzie who engages in dangerous behavior that includes sleep-eating, which could poison her. Elvis must also meet with a ditzy therapist who gives her a time line for grief while maundering on about her own divorce. The beautifully drawn Elvis is rescued by a job at the zoo that fits her interests perfectly and, more important, by her own stunning perseverance; this is one family that veers toward the depths but is finally, joyously redeemed. Verdict Elvis is a charmer, and the entire novel is as delicious as the rabbit cakes Lizzie bakes in abundance both to win a place in the Guinness record book and to honor their mother. Highly recommended for a wide range of fiction readers.-Barbara Hoffert, Library Journal © Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
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Review by School Library Journal Review
Rabbit cake, made with a special aluminum mold, was for special occasions in the Babbitt family. Looking back, Elvis thinks that the first sign of danger was when her mother burned the ears of the rabbit cake meant to celebrate Elvis's 10th birthday. Six months later, Elvis's mother drowns, ostensibly by sleepwalking into the river. The scientifically minded protagonist investigates her mother's death, making sense of the taxonomy of death and grief with curiosity and wry humor. Her guileless observations are often hilarious: hints of her mother's promiscuity emerge, pieced together from a memory of her mother "pretending to milk" a man and the mystery of a parrot that perfectly imitates her mother's voice. Meanwhile, Elvis's father begins wearing his dead wife's makeup, and Elvis's 16-year-old sister Lizzie's sleepwalking grows ever more dangerous. When a sleeping Lizzie is discovered climbing into a hot oven, their desperate father sends her to a mental institution. Elvis's salvation comes through volunteer work at a local animal sanctuary. While she is an accurate, observant narrator, with an abundance of knowledge about the natural world, she has little success in understanding people; she puzzles over psychology texts and consults a telephone psychic. Hartnett adeptly conveys a full picture of this family's emotional turmoil, tinged with the sincere hope of a child and the rising anxiety of an adolescent. VERDICT Teens who enjoyed the engaging voice of 11-year-old Flavia in Alan Bradley's The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie will love Elvis Babbitt.-Diane Colson, City College, Gainesville, FL © Copyright 2017. 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.
