Who's in the Hall?: A Mystery in Four Chapters - Hardcover

Hearne, Betsy

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0688162614 ISBN 13: 9780688162610

Publisher: Greenwillow, 2000

Synopsis

Hey! What's up with the Willy-Nilly Wag Wave Dizzy-Lizzy Lowdown-Rowan Ratty-Ryan Nelly-Belly and Wicked-Nick?

And who exactly is in the hall?

By the time you get to the last page of Betsy Hearne's mysterious tongue twister of a story, you willy-nilly know!

About this title

About the Author

In Her Own Words...

"I grew up in an Alabama pine forest with no one to play with except a dog, cat, horse, cow, alligator, raccoon, possum, owl, and garter snake. None of them talked much. They were pretty good listeners, though, and I learned from them to listen and also not to be afraid of silence. Silence can be a writer ' s best friend when she needs to hear the voices in her head.

"Every once in a while I did make too much noise, especially when my father was listening to the radio, trying to glean the latest news of World War II. If I spoke then, he would yell at me to be quiet and I would slink into the kitchen, where my mother always seemed to be chopping vegetables before dinner. "Did I ever tell you (chop, chop, chop) how your great-grandmother (chop, chop) chopped her hand open one time (chop) and found her needle and thread (chop, chop) and dropped the needle into boiling water (chop, chop, chop) and sewed her left hand up with her right hand (chop)?" Who needed World War II? My heroes were in the kitchen.

"I also heard a lot of stories from the AfricanAmerican women who worked with my mother to help take care of the patients in my-father-thedoctor's clinic. From listening to stories I branched out to reading stories. I didn't go to school because our backwoods education system was so bad. My mother taught me at home, and I wrote my first book for her birthday when I was four years old, a poetry book. It was pretty short, but so was I.

"I didn't stay short, however. When we moved to East Tennessee for better schooling, I managed to hit six feet by the sixth grade. Because I was built like a tree, and because my parents were for integration before there was a civil rights movement (my mother was a Yankee and my father was from India), and because I was an outsider on all counts, I still didn't have anybody to play with. I began to read stacks of books from the library. I also practiced piano, guitar, voice, and harp and got hooked on Appalachian folk music, then Irish folk music, Jewish folk music, flamenco, and on around the world.

"When I got to college, the creative-writing teacher made all his students imitate either T. S. Eliot or Ernest Hemingway, so I decided to continue writing on my own. I majored in history and wrote a historical novel for my senior thesis. But what about a job? I went to the public library looking for work. They said there was an opening in the children's department, if I would take a children's literature course and start a storytelling program. I told them the biggest story of all-that I could tell stories-and that story came true. After a while, we had a hundred kids coming to the program every week.

"I began to review children's books, which I have done for thirty years, at Booklist and then at the Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books. My own poetry, fiction, and picture books were published. I studied children's literature and folklore, got a Ph.D. at the University of Chicago's Graduate Library School, and became a professor. The funny thing was that after all the tales I had gotten to know about heroes, tricksters, fools, and fairies from cultures all around this country and the world, it still hadn't hit me that my true folklore came from the kitchen.

"Then during a storytelling class I started telling about the women in my family. The students got quiet in a way I'd never heard, so quiet I could hear the voices in my head. Those voices got stronger and stronger until one day the words became clear--words about my mother, my grandmother, my great-grandmother, my great-great-grandmother, and on back-and on forward, too, with my daughters speaking up for the future. Seven Brave Women didn't take very long to write, but it took my whole life to hear. And the best thing about it is the way those women wanted to share, not star, and the way readers have shared their own family stories in return. Listening is still the best thing I ever learned."

From Kirkus Reviews

In this verbose picture book Hearne (Seven Brave Women, 1997 etc.) hits home the parental dictum, "don't open the door to strangers." In an inner-city apartment building, Lizzy and her two dogs are left alone for a few moments by her babysitter. Lizzy remembers not to open the door when someone claiming to be the new janitor knocks and wants to come in to fix the sink. In another apartment, Rowan, Ryan, and their pet rat are also briefly left alone by their babysitter, and they too decline to open the door to the disembodied voice of the janitor. With everyone communicating through peepholes and seeing only the visitor's lips there is some confusion as to who and where the janitor actually is. In the end the three children, two babysitters, and three pets meet up and become friends as the true identity of the janitor is revealed: the janitor is a woman. Hale's (Elizabeth's Doll, not reviewed) illustrations go a long way to improving the story with bold-lined watercolors fairly bouncing with energy and spirited characters. Also contributing to the kid-appeal is sidebar art of the interior of the building that affords an X-ray view of who is going up or down the stairs and elevators. It's the rhyming and word play, "Wag and Wave and Willy-Nilly and Dizzy-Lizzy" that might keep the reader turning pages, because this mystery isn't very mysterious. (Picture book. 5-9) -- Copyright © 2000 Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: Greenwillow
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0688162614
• ISBN 13: 9780688162610
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 32
• Illustrator: Hale Christy