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Overview / 简介: |
| Failed pirate Jack Plank entertains his fellow boarders with delightful and elaborate tales of why he can't find a proper job. "This is one treasure of a book."—SLJ |
From Organization / 国外机构评价: |
| Grade 2-6–When a pirate ship falls on hard times, Jack Plank is let go because he is not very good at plundering. Left in the Caribbean town of Saltwash, he has a bit of good luck to temper the bad. Eleven-year-old Nina, the daughter of the widow he boards with, offers to show him around the port town to find work. But at dinner each night, Jack reports to the other boarders his unsuccessful day. Trouble is, Jack is not well suited to be a farmer, baker, fortune-teller, fisherman, barber, goldsmith, actor, or musician, each for a different reason. For instance, he can't farm in the fields across the bridge because he once helped an ungrateful troll reposition itself under it. He can't take edibles from the sea because a shipmate once turned into an octopus and saved his life, and so on. These stories spin out, one each for eight days, at the end of which, the resourceful Nina comes up with the perfect job. Babbitt has a lively time with proper names (Leech, Snipe, Scudder, Old Miss Withers) and swiftly delineates character in short conversations at dinner. Jack's tallish stories make fresh use of familiar folklore motifs: a mummy seeking its missing hand, a mermaid who enchants a sailor, the fate of a feral child raised by seagulls. Babbitt's spare black line drawings introduce each chapter and give readers some indication of the person whose story Jack relates. Some of the tales, which beg to be read aloud, will leave listeners arguing about what really happened while others will make them grin. All in all, this is one treasure of a book.–Susan Hepler, formerly at Burgundy Farm Country Day School, Alexandria, VA
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Foreign Customer Review / 国外客户评价: |
| Rating: five stars.
I was sitting at the children's reference desk the other day when a parent came up to me with a request. "I want a bedtime story to read to my daughter. Nothing cutesy or anything. Just some really nice tales to tell her before she goes to sleep. She's seven." Requests of this sort are a delight. You wait and hope for them. Not as many parents as I would like think to look for this kind of material, so when I get a request of this sort it's all I can do to keep from hopping up and down with glee. After one flash of inspiration I tried to sell the mom on Toys Go Out: Being the Adventures of a Knowledgeable Stingray, a Toughy Little Buffalo, and Someone Called Plastic by Emily Jenkins. No such luck. Not because shedidn 't like the book, mind you, but she'd already read it with her kid and wanted something new. We did some additional searching and I found her some nice books, but all the while I kept thinking to myself, "Why oh why oh whyhasn 't `Jack Plank' come out yet?" Because, you see, "Jack Plank Tells Tales," by the legendary Natalie Babbitt had not yet been published, but I'd seen a particularly enjoyable advanced reader's copy that had just charmed me. These days there's been a kind of upsurge in good bedtime reading thatdoesn't necessarily stink of either nostalgia or uber -cuteness. Finding the right balance can still be a challenge though. Maybe the time is ripe, then, for Natalie Babbitt to break her twenty-five years' worth of silence so as to bring us a book that feels like something your parents might have read to you when you were young.
Jack Plank's a lovely fellow, but the fact of the matter is that when it comes to pirating, he stinks. I mean, he gets along with everyone and he's been with his ship, The Avarice, for years and years now. But pirates always have to consider the bottom line and when it comes right down to it, Jackdoesn 't plunder very well. Not very well at all. So off he goes to find a job. While doing so he settles into a boarding house run by the kindly Mrs.DelFresno and her daughter Nina. Each day Jack and Nina go off to find him an occupation, and each day they come back empty handed. Fortunately, for every job that Jack turns down he's able to tell a rip-roaring story for why becoming a baker, a fisherman, a goldsmith, or a host of other places of employment might be too much of a reminder of his days back on his pirate ship. In the end, Jack has told stories involving everything from a girl raised by seagulls to squid-men, vengeful ghosts, mermaid lovers, and trolls. Fortunately, sometimes the best job is one so glaringly obvious you don't notice it until someone points it out to you.
Stories are so much fun, but they're sometimes difficult to promote properly. My library's folktale/fairytale section circulates beautifully, no question. Yet most of what goes out are picture books of individual tales. Collected stories gather dust, usually because peoplearen 't sure how to use them with their children. The nice thing about "Jack Plank," however, is that the main story (Jack trying to find a job) carries quite nicely from chapter to chapter. So there's a single story you're trying to get to the end of, alongside short tales of very brief length. And man oh man, talk about kid-friendly. Some of these tales do touch on things like ghosts and murder, but I would argue with you that a kid as young as four or five would get a kick out of hearing this book night after night without any nightmarish repercussions. There are pictures to look at (all penned by the author, no less), and original tales that you may have seen different versions of here and there but never in this format.
Come to think of it, y'all are familiar with Ms. Babbitt's work already, right? Her best known work, "Tuck Everlasting," is one of those Great American Children's Novels. She disappeared without a trace for twenty-five years (which is to say, shedidn 't publish anything during that time) and now this book is her return to the fold. Happily I report to you that her writing is as keen as ever. In fact, what I like about Natalie Babbitt is her ability to tell a children's tale with true simplicity. She's just good at what she does. The stories are top notch, always interesting, and fun to read aloud. The characters have wonderful names like "Waddy Spontoon", "Captain Scudder", and "Leech". And the character of Jack himself is a lot of fun. It's hard to put a narrator's personality aside so that you can use him as a kind of storytelling vessel, but Jack just comes across as a genuinely nice guy with a gift of gab and his own way of looking at things.
Basically, I'm going to sell this to skeptical parents as pirate tales. Pirates have sort of hit a Renaissance right now (or, in pirate speak, aRen-ARRR-sance ) and any book that even hints at having piratical underpinnings is certain to circulate and sell relatively well. Label "Jack Plank Tells Tales" a lovely return to form for the eloquent Ms. Babbitt. Here's hoping she has a couple more stories hidden about her person for the perusal of all. If your bedtime story collection runs a bit low, this is a lovely way to stock it up again.
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About the Author / 作者介绍: |
| A gifted artist and writer, Natalie Babbitt's novels are inspired by a brilliance and imagination that is completely original. She began her career in 1966 with the publication of a picture book, The Forty-Ninth Magician, a collaboration with her husband, Samuel Fisher Babbitt. Her first novel, The Search for Delicious, established her gift for writing magical tales with a more profound meaning embedded within them. Kneeknock Rise earned her a Newbery Honor Medal, but it is Tuck Everlasting which has insured Babbitt's place in the history of children's literature. This modern classic, which has also been made recently into a major motion picture starring Alexis Bledel, William Hurt, and Sissy Spacek, asks an enduring and powerful question: If we could live forever, would we want to? Babbitt has written six more novels including The Eyes of the Amaryllis and Goody Hall-each one presenting her unique vision of an enchanted world. Her latest novel, Jack Plank Tells Tales, was published in Spring 2007. Natalie Babbitt lives in Providence, Rhode Island, and is a grandmother of three. When asked what she wants readers to remember about her books, she replied, 'the questions without answers.'
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