A Girl Named Zippy: Growing Up Small in Mooreland Indiana - Hardcover

Kimmel, Haven

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0385499825 ISBN 13: 9780385499828

Publisher: Doubleday, 2001

Synopsis

When Haven Kimmel was born in 1965 in Mooreland, Indiana, was a sleepy little hamlet of three hundred people. Nicknamed "Zippy" for the way she would bolt around the house, this small girl was possessed of big eyes and even bigger ears. In this witty and lovingly told memoir, Kimmel takes readers back to a time when small-town America was caught in the amber of the innocent postwar period--people helped their neighbors, went to church on Sunday, and kept barnyard animals in their backyards.

To three-year-old Zippy, it made perfect sense to strike a bargain with her father to keep her baby bottle--never mind that when she did, it was the first time she'd ever spoken. In her nonplussed family, Zippy has the perfect supporting cast: her beautiful yet dour brother, Danny, a seeker of the true faith; her sweetly sensible sister, Lindy, who wins the local beauty pageant; her mother, Delonda, who dispenses wisdom from the corner of the couch; and her father, Bob Jarvis, who never met a bet he didn't like.

Whether describing a serious case of chicken love, another episode with the evil Edythe across the street, or the night Zippy's dad borrowed thirty-six coon dogs and a raccoon to prove to the complaining neighbors just how quiet his two dogs were, Kimmel treats readers to a heroine who is wonderfully sweet and shy as she navigates the quirky adult world surrounding Zippy.

About this title

From the Publisher

From Publishers Weekly

It's a cliche to say that a good memoir reads like a well-crafted work of fiction, but Kimmel's smooth, impeccably humorous prose evokes her childhood as vividly as any novel. Born in 1965, she grew up in Mooreland, Ind., a place that by some "mysterious and powerful mathematical principle" perpetually retains a population of 300, a place where there's no point learning the street names because it's just as easy to say, "We live at the four-way stop sign." Hers is less a formal autobiography than a collection of vignettes comprising the things a small child would remember: sick birds, a new bike, reading comics at the drugstore, the mean old lady down the street. The truths of childhood are rendered in lush yet simple prose; here's Zippy describing a friend who hates wearing girls' clothes: "Julie in a dress was like the rest of us in quicksand." Over and over, we encounter pearls of third-grade wisdom revealed in a child's assured voice: "There are a finite number of times one can safely climb the same tree in a single day"; or, regarding Jesus, "Everyone around me was flat-out in love with him, and who wouldn't be? He was good with animals, he loved his mother, and he wasn't afraid of blind people." (Mar.)Forecast: Dreamy and comforting, spiced with flashes of wit, this book seems a natural for readers of the Oprah school of women's fiction (e.g., Elizabeth Berg, Janet Fitch). The startling baby photograph on the cover should catch browsers' eyes.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

The title is awful, but Kimmel's childhood memoir rings true. Mooreland had a population of about 300, small enough for a grade-school girl to explore every corner and have strong opinions about the town's adults. More important, however, than the mean old lady across the street and the loud old man at the drugstore were Kimmel's family (parents, older brother and sister, and various pets) and the "best friends" with whom she experienced her small world. Kimmel remembers vividly what it felt like to be a kid: the pleasure of being outdoors; the unquestioned bonds of a "best" friendship; and the oddness of many of the things adults (and teenagers) do. Even in the 1960s and 1970s (Kimmel was born in 1965), Mooreland escaped the larger society's disruptions. An empty store was a Ku Klux Klan headquarters in the 1920s, but there were no African Americans around town; a pair of hippies moved in and offered Zippy a chance to give her dad a valued present.

Mary Carroll Copyright American Library Association. All rights reserved

From Library Journal

In this first book, Kimmel has written a love letter to her hometown of Mooreland, IN, a town with an unchanging population of 300 in America's heartland. Nicknamed "Zippy" for her energetic interpretation of a circus monkey, she could not be bothered to speak until she was three years old, and her first words involved bargaining with her father about whether or not a baby bottle was still appropriate. Born in 1965, Zippy lived in a world filled with a loving family, peculiar neighbors, and multitudes of animals, including a chicken she loved and treated like a baby. Her story is filled with good humor, fine storytelling, and acute observations of small town life. Recommended for libraries in the Midwest or with large memoir collections.

Pam Kingsbury, Alabama Humanities Fdn., Florence Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From the Back Cover

Advance Praise for A Girl Named Zippy:

"Here is a rarity: a completely original book, narrated in the freshest, most compelling child's narrative voice since Ellen Foster. Often hysterically funny, sometimes wrenching, A Girl Named Zippy is filled with revelations. Haven Kimmel has penned a lovely poem to her heartland hometown."
--Lee Smith, author of Oral History and Family Line

"A Girl Named Zippy is sly, evocative, gentle, wry and dead-on funny. Haven Kimmel is perfect on the details and spins graceful stories that sink in and stay with you for a good long time. This is, simply put, a masterful piece of writing--imagine pouring a highball, settling into a comfortable seat, and being entertained on a summer porch by a charming old friend."
--Martin Clark, author of The Many Aspects of Mobile Home Living

"The prose in this book is lovely and wise and witty and sings as beautifully as Somewhere Over the Rainbow, but it seems to be have been written by Dorothy's wild and irreverent sister, the one you never saw in the movie, the one who locked Dorothy outside when the tornado was coming, sold Toto, set fire to the scarecrow, ate the flying monkeys for lunch, and painted all the blacktop roads in Mooreland, Indiana, the colors of the rainbow, the colors of imagination and heart and laughter."

--Lawrence Naumoff, author of Rootie Kazootie and Silk Hope, NC

"Phenomenal. This is just perfectly written and right on target and she doesn't miss a beat."
--Kaye Gibbons, author of Ellen Foster and A Virtuous Woman

About this edition

• Publisher: Doubleday
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0385499825
• ISBN 13: 9780385499828
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 288