Bingo Brown, Gypsy Lover - Hardcover

Byars, Betsy

3.79

81 ratings by Goodreads

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0670833223 ISBN 13: 9780670833221

Publisher: Viking Books for Young Readers, 1990

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A sixth-grade boy deals with the prospect of a new baby brother and a long-distance love relationship.

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About the Author:

Betsy Byars began her writing career rather late in life. "In all of my school years, . . . not one single teacher ever said to me, 'Perhaps you should consider becoming a writer,'" Byars recalls. "Anyway, I didn't want to be a writer. Writing seemed boring. You sat in a room all day by yourself and typed. If I was going to be a writer at all, I was going to be a foreign correspondent like Claudette Colbert in Arise My Love. I would wear smashing hats, wisecrack with the guys, and have a byline known round the world. My father wanted me to be a mathematician." So Byars set out to become mathematician, but when she couldn't grasp calculus in college, she turned to English. Even then, writing was not on her immediate horizon.

First, she married and started a family. The writing career didn't emerge until she was 28, a mother of two children, and living in a small place she called the barracks apartment, in Urbana, Illinois. She and her husband, Ed, had moved there in 1956 so he could attend graduate school at the University of Illinois. She was bored, had no friends, and so turned to writing to fill her time. Byars started writing articles for The Saturday Evening Post, Look,and other magazines. As her family grew and her children started to read, she began to write books for young people and, fortunately for her readers, discovered that there was more to being a writer than sitting in front of a typewriter.

"Making up stories and characters is so interesting that I'm never bored. Each book has been a different writing experience. It takes me about a year to write a book, but I spend another year thinking about it, polishing it, and making improvements. I always put something of myself into my books -- something that happened to me. Once a wanderer came by my house and showed me how to brush my teeth with a cherry twig; that went in The House of Wingscopyright � 2000 by Penguin Putnam Books for Young Readers. All rights reserved.

From School Library Journal:

Grade 5-8 --The saga of Harrison "Bingo" Brown continues in a third book in which he faces not only the vicissitudes of puberty and first love but also the imminent arrival of a baby brother whose presence threatens to disrupt the order of things. As the story opens, however, this is a minor annoyance. Bingo's main problem is the announcement by his beloved Melissa (still far away in Bixby, Oklahoma) that she is sending him a present for Christmas, news that promptly dispatches him into the minefield of boy-girl present buying. Bingo feels somewhat overwhelmed until his mother gives birth prematurely to baby brother Jamie, whose precarious early days inspire in him a depth of emotion that places things in perspective, a situation Byars depicts with particular tenderness. Byars brings to immediate life Bingo's thoughts and feelings, and gently comments on them as well. Bingo continues to grow as a character in each book, and here he progresses from slightly cocky self-preoccupation to vulnerable concern for others. Nevertheless, he's still a wry, moderately fumbling Bingo--he just handles things better. Language, characterization, and the use of incident to advance them continue to be stronger than plot in this series. Thus, the books, while enjoyable in themselves, work best taken together as chapters in the chronicle of the coming of age of a wonderfully likable, interesting, and original character. --Christine Behrmann, New York Public Library
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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