The Willoughbys return

Lois Lowry

Book - 2020

Thirty years after their disappearance, the previously frozen Willoughbys have thawed out and returned from the Alps, to the consternation of their children and grandchildren.

Saved in:

Children's Room Show me where

jFICTION/Lowry Lois
1 / 1 copies available
Location Call Number   Status
Children's Room jFICTION/Lowry Lois Checked In
Subjects
Genres
Humorous fiction
Published
Boston : Houghton Mifflin Harcourt [2020]
Language
English
Main Author
Lois Lowry (author)
Physical Description
182 pages : illustrations ; 21 cm
Audience
Ages 8 to 12.
Grades 4-6.
ISBN
9780358423898
Contents unavailable.
Review by Booklist Review

Two articles in the newspaper directly affect the Willoughby household, where Tim, his wife, and their son, Richie, live with the retired billionaire who handed his confectionery business over to Tim years earlier. Thunderstruck by the news that Congress has banned candy, Tim fails to notice that an American couple (his parents), frozen in the Alps 30 years earlier, has thawed and appears unharmed. The book traces several story lines that eventually converge. One follows Tim's defrosted parents, now penniless and confused but possibly somewhat less reprehensible than in The Willoughbys (2008). Another looks at his bored, lonely son, Richie, and two others concern his impoverished but kindly neighbors, the Poore children and their father, who would like to sell you an outdated set of encyclopedias. While the text fills in the backstory so adroitly that reading The Willoughbys first isn't necessary, it makes this sequel even more satisfying. Once again, footnotes add to the fun. Lowry exaggerates and gently mocks the conventions of old-fashioned fiction, while capturing readers with her sure-handed storytelling and wry wit.HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Setting aside the fact of Lowry's inherent appeal, this return to a beloved story is perfectly timed to coincide with the Netflix animated film of the original book.

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

Twelve years after the publication of The Willoughbys and 30 years after it takes place, Lowry's quirky cast returns for another madcap adventure, balancing the original's droll voice and elaborate plotting with a slightly more humane tone. With the Willoughby siblings now grown, the eldest--Tim, now a candy manufacturing magnate--is living lavishly in Commander Melanoff's mansion with son Richie, 11, when a draconian new law criminalizes candy and jeopardizes the family's fortune. They represent a stark contrast to the Poores, aptly named neighbors whose patriarch is away on a futile mission to sell outdated encyclopedias. In their father's absence, Winifred, 10, and Winston, 12, help their mother turn the modest home into a B&B ("bed and bathroom") for much-needed funds. Their first guests? The newly defrosted Willoughby parents, who arrive fresh off a Swiss Alp clueless about the passage of time and increasingly eager to make amends with the children they once mistreated. Lowry's arch narration, enhanced by amusing footnote asides, moves nimbly across many story lines, employing running jokes (the Poore children chastise their mother for "Marming" when she spouts platitudes à la Little Women's Marmee) and resulting in an entertainingly absurd revival that recalls Roald Dahl's oeuvre. Ages 8--12. Agent: Emily Van Beek, Folio Literary. (Sept.)

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by School Library Journal Review

Gr 4--7--Henry and Frances Willoughby have been frozen in the Swiss Alps for three decades. They left their children with the nanny, and 30 years later Tim Willoughby is grown up and runs a successful candy manufacturing company. One problem: Candy is now banned and Tim's fortune is lost. Richie, Tim's son, is lonely and becomes friends with Winifred and Winston Poore. The Poores are aptly named; they live next door in a hovel, eat gruel for breakfast, and reuse Band-Aids. Their dad is traveling the country selling encyclopedias and mailing rocks home to collector Winifred. Mrs. Poore opens a bed-and-breakfast to raise money. One day, Mr. and Mrs. Willoughby show up at her door. They're back from Switzerland, thawed out and in search of their children. With nothing for dinner, a desperate Mrs. Poore serves a salad of leaves she picks from her neighbor's garden with gruesome results. Lowry's latest resumes the irreverent humor and tongue-in-cheek asides of the first book. Literary references abound: Mrs. Poore's sentimental musings are called "marming," after Marmee from Little Women (a footnote lists all the actresses who've played Marmee in the movies). The story is also peppered with contemporary cultural references: A dazed Mr. and Mrs. Willoughby wonder what an Uber might be. Richie's materialistic lifestyle (he orders constantly from the internet), counterpoints poignantly with the loving but paltry existence of the Poore children. VERDICT An old-fashioned story with a knowing, modern feel. For fans of the first book.--Sarah Webb, City and Country Sch. Lib., NY

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

The Willoughbys (The Willoughbys, rev. 3/08) are back. It's thirty years later. Oldest brother Tim is now a father himself, a mega-rich candy company executive. Our main character is his son, Richie. But the rags-to-riches plot of the original book threatens to reverse itself when candy is declared illegal and the family fortune is imperiled. Meanwhile, the next-door Poore family, poor in name and circumstance, hangs on by the skin of their teeth. In a third strain of the narrative, the horrible Willoughby parents, previously frozen on a mountain in Switzerland, thaw out (due to climate change) and are revealed to have been cryogenically preserved so that they are now younger than their own children and thrown into a world they don't recognize. Lowry keeps all this together through the use of a shamelessly explanatory omniscient voice, a generous application of absurdist footnotes, a devil-may-care attitude to narrative conventions, and the superglue of extremely bad jokes. As in the first book, literary allusions reign supreme. Lowry's material includes "Rip Van Winkle" ("What is Brexit? Who is Tom Brady? And what is Facebook?") and Little Women ("Oh, Mother...you are such a Marmee"). It's a shtick-y confection for readers with a taste for parody. Sarah Ellis September/October 2020 p.99(c) Copyright 2020. 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.
Review by Kirkus Book Review

The incompetent parents from The Willoughbys (2008) find themselves thawed by global warming. Henry and Frances haven't aged since the accident that buried them in snow and froze them for 30 years in the Swiss Alps. Their Rip van Winkle--ish return is archly comedic, with the pair, a medical miracle, realizing (at last!) how much they've lost and how baffled they are now. Meanwhile, their eldest son, Tim, is grown and in charge of his adoptive father's candy empire, now threatened with destitution by a congressional ban on candy (opposed by an unnamed Bernie Sanders). He is father to 11-year-old Richie, who employs ad-speak whenever he talks about his newest toys, like a remote-controlled car ("The iconic Lamborghini bull adorns the hubcaps and hood"). But Richie envies Winston Poore, the very poor boy next door, who has a toy car carved for him by his itinerant encyclopedia-salesman father. Winston and his sister, Winifred, plan to earn money for essentials by offering their services as companions to lonely Richie while their mother dabbles, spectacularly unsuccessfully, in running a B & B. Lowry's exaggerated characters and breezy, unlikely plot are highly entertaining. She offers humorous commentary both via footnotes advising readers of odd facts related to the narrative and via Henry and Frances' reentry challenges. The threads of the story, with various tales of parents gone missing, fortunes lost or never found, and good luck in the end, are gathered most satisfactorily and warmheartedly. Highly amusing. (Fiction. 8-12) Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

1 The front page of the New York Times, on a Thursday in June: CONGRESS VOTES OVERWHELMINGLY TO BAN CANDY, CITES DENTAL HEALTH On the same day, on an inside page of a Zurich newspaper: AMERICAN COUPLE, FROZEN IN SWISS MOUNTAINS FOR THREE DECADES, THAW SPONTANEOUSLY, APPEAR UNHARMED These two events, it was later proved, were related. It's complicated.1       1 So pay attention. It will be confusing at first. But it's worth hanging in there. And there won't be a quiz. 2 High on a mountain in Switzerland (one of the Alps, though a minor Alp, not a particularly well-known Alp, not the Matterhorn or one of those postcard-y ones), an odd, lumpy, ice-encrusted shape began to move slightly, causing the glistening snow to shift.       It had been very warm and sunny for days. Weeks, actually--even months. Across the globe, glaciers had shrunk and icebergs had dissolved. Now, on this insignificant Alp, which had been snow-covered for eons, suddenly rocks began to appear, sleek with water from the snowmelt. Here and there a green stem emerged, and an occasional flower.       And now, a moving lump.       Then, beside the first strangely moving shape, another large, snowy lump shifted. Amazingly, from one of the shifting mounds, a hand emerged. It brushed some snow aside, revealing an entire arm. Then a second arm appeared.       The first mound sat up, and the two arms, moist from the melted snow, began to brush snow and wipe water from a face. It was a newly defrosted face, male, with a glowering frown. It looked around, perceived the second mound nearby, and reached over to give it a poke. Then another poke, and another. Finally the second lump sat up, also frowning. This one appeared to be female (though it is hard to tell, with a lump).       "I bet anything my hair is an absolute mess," the second lump grumbled.       But the first lump paid no attention. He was testing his stiff fingers, tapping at them to dislodge a few ice particles. Finally he reached down to his right hip and removed a soggy wallet from his pocket.       "I knew it!" he groaned, prying open the wet leather. "My money is ruined! Sodden. Practically dissolved . And all stuck together in a messy wad."       "Our dollars?"       "No, those ridiculous Swiss francs1 they made us get. Clearly inferior. American dollars wouldn't deteriorate like this."       "Well, are they usable enough for food, at least? I'm hungry."       "Of course they'll take our money. They're all crooks here."       The woman (because they were a pair: man and woman) groaned, struggled to her feet, then knelt. "Where's my purse? I don't see my purse." On her hands and knees, she began pawing through the wet snow. "Here!" she said. "Here it is! But yuck--it's drenched!"       "Don't worry about it. And stand up! You look like a cockroach, crawling around that way. Come on. We'll make our way down to the village and get a quick lunch--not that they have any decent food in this godforsaken place. Then we'll get the first train out." The man stood upright with some difficulty and replaced the wet billfold in his hip pocket.       Finally the pair, grumbling and complaining, managed to stumble slowly down the side of the thawing Alp, passing on the low slopes meadows dotted with cows, toward the tiny village at its foot. The one main street was lined with brightly painted homes and dotted with flower boxes filled with petunias and geraniums. They found a table at a small café, where they ate heartily of a veal stew and each had three glasses of quite a good wine. But they were thwarted when the bill was brought to their table.       "I'm so sorry," the waiter said as he looked with dismay at the sodden mass of Swiss francs that the man offered him. "Ve can't accept vet money. But--"       " Vet ? Good lord, man--can't you even say the word wet ?"       "Apologies, sir. I vill try harder. Damp vould be okay, perhaps. But soggy vet is bad."       "Give them a credit card, dear," the woman suggested.       With a loud sigh the man pried a platinum card loose from his waterlogged wallet.       "I'm sorry, Mr. . . ." The waiter looked carefully at the card. "Ah, Mr. Villoughby. But this credit card expired many years ago."       "It's WILLOUGHBY, you idiot! Why can't you dolts pronounce a W the way normal people do?"       "I'm wery sorry, sir. I vish I could," the waiter replied, with a roll of his eyes that implied he did not vish any such thing.       The maître d' appeared, smiling politely. "Is there a problem?" he asked. Then he looked more closely at the ill-tempered couple. "Oh. I see you've defrosted. You're still damp."        "Defrosted?" bellowed Mr. Willoughby. "What on earth--"       "You were frozen," the maître d' explained, and peered at the date on the credit card. "And now you've thawed. It's happened to a number of climbers."       "And many goats, as vell," the waiter added. "It's the varming."       "The vat? I mean: what? "       "Global varming, sir."       Mrs. Willoughby sighed. "You never believed in that, Henry. But now look." She patted her own head. "My hairstyle is hopelessly out of date. Take me home, right away."       "Bring me a telephone," Mr. Willoughby demanded.       "Of course," the maître d' said. He nodded to the waiter, who scurried away to find a phone. "You must call your family."       "Family?" Henry Willoughby said, looking startled.       His wife groaned. "Oh lord, we have those horrible children. Do we know their phone number, Henry? Do we even know where they live?"       Her husband shrugged. "I forget. But we don't have to worry about them. We hired that nanny, remember?"       "Oh, yes. The nanny."       "Anyway, it doesn't matter about them," her husband muttered. "I'm calling my bank."       The maître d' smiled politely. "You should certainly do that," he said. "You owe us vun hundred and twelve Swiss francs for your dinner. I do hope you enjoyed the weal? And may I pour you some more of this vine?"   1 Most countries in Europe started using Euros in 1995. But not Switzerland. They still like their francs. Excerpted from The Willoughbys Return by Lois Lowry 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.