Weird Stories from the Lonesome Cafe. - Hardcover

Cox, Judy

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0152021345 ISBN 13: 9780152021344

Publisher: Harcourt Childrens Books, 2000

Synopsis

Ten-year-old Sam is spending the summer in the middle of Nevada, working at the remote Lonesome Café. And the Help Wanted sign in the window brings some very strange visitors--Bigfoot, Elvis, a jolly fat man from the North Pole, and a young girl and her dog who blow in on a tornado from Kansas. And then there's the spaceship that crashes nearby and its little green passenger. . . . Sam is kept busy distracting the nosy TV news team so they don't discover the identities of the odd visitors, but it's not easy. Come along for a visit to the Lonesome Café--it's the place to be.

About this title

About the Author

Judy Cox has been an elementary school educator for more than ten years. Ms. Cox teaches school and makes her home in West Linn, Oregon.

Diane Kidd works as a museum education specialist for the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. Weird Stories from the Lonesome Cafe is her first book for children. Ms. Kidd lives in Silver Spring, Maryland.

Reviews

Grade 2-4-Sam moves with his uncle to the middle of the desert for peace and quiet. Uncle Clem is supposed to be a writer, but his severe lack of imagination keeps him from seeing that the Lonesome Caf? he opens employs Bigfoot, Elvis, Santa Claus, Dorothy and Toto, and E. T. It's Sam who recognizes their incredible paranormal good fortune, and Sam who tells the story. It's Clem who inadvertently saves each of the newcomers from being discovered by the persistent Channel 54 News team. While Cox stretches the story idea fairly thin, she succeeds in writing an early chapter book with appeal to more sophisticated older reluctant readers. They'll appreciate the repetition as well as the joke on Uncle Clem. Kidd's plentiful, black-and-white illustrations provide comic relief without looking too childish for the older audience.
Pat Leach, Lincoln City Libraries, NE
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

As she did in Rabbit Pirates, Cox chooses an amiable eating establishment setting as the setting for this cheerful spoof. Sam's Uncle Clem, an aspiring author, wishes something would happen at his remote Nevada caf? so that he would have something to write about. Yet narrator Sam spots some mighty strange occurrences right under their noses. Just after an enormous, furry stranger whom the duo names Harry arrives for some chow, a TV news crew appears in search of Bigfoot, who has been spotted in the area. Next, a fellow with dark hair "slicked-back and waved up high" pulls up in a 1950s pink Caddy and introduces himself as "El." Mr. C, a jolly, round gent with a big white beard on vacation from his workshop up North shows up next, followed by a pigtailed girl who blows in on a small tornado and announces to her dog, "I don't think we're in Kansas anymore." Sam's oblivious uncle hires them all, still insisting that "nothing ever happens here" each time the reporters return in search of a story. Cox sprinkles her quick-moving if predictable narrative with double entendres and references that range from obvious to waggish ("Must be all shook up," says El after an alien emerges from his crashed spaceship). The Lonesome Caf? doesn't set out to serve up substantial fare, but the light snack it offers will satiate kids with an appetite for shenanigans, and Kidd's black-and-white cartoon art dishes out an extra dollop of fun. Ages 7-10. (Apr.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Harcourt Childrens Books
• Publication date: 2000
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0152021345
• ISBN 13: 9780152021344
• Binding: Hardcover
• Illustrator: Kidd Diane
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 72