Airmail to the Moon - Hardcover

Birdseye, Tom

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0823406830 ISBN 13: 9780823406838

Publisher: Holiday House, 1988

Synopsis

When the tooth that she was saving for the tooth fairy disappears, Ora Mae sets out to find the thief and send him "airmail to the moon!"

About this title

About the Author

Tom Birdseye readily admits that he never aspired to be a writer. As a young man growing up in North Carolina and Kentucky, he was more interested in sports, crawdads, mud balls, forts built in the woods, secret codes, bicycles without fenders, butter pecan ice cream, and snow. Birdseye, however, became published at the age of thirty-five after ten years of teaching, a year of living in Japan, and two unrelated degrees. The author once commented, "Life, it seems, is full of who'd-a-thought-its."

"At times it still amazes me that writing is my profession," Birdseye once said. "It was such a difficult process for me when I was a kid; I can really identify with the reluctant writer in school today." The author recalled how difficult it was for him to complete stories because of his poor grammatical skills. He acknowledges that if it were not for certain people offering him encouragement, he would not have prospered as a writer. Birdseye now carries a small notebook around just in case he comes across any new ideas or characters.

"True, I still labor through my stories," Birdseye once admitted, "wrestling with the spelling beast and the punctuation monster, writing and rewriting, then rewriting some more, until I glean my best, but the process has become one of pleasure instead of pain. I love doing it, and I love sharing it with others. The boy who couldn't imagine himself a writer, now can't imagine himself anything else."

Tom lives in Oregon with his wife, Debbie.  He has two grown daughters.  When not writing or in classrooms talking with children and teachers about the writing process, I enjoy skiing, rock and mountain climbing, ski mountaineering, backpacking, mountain biking, kayaking, running, playing the string bass, and reading.

From Publishers Weekly

Ora Mae Cotton, who lives in Crabapple Orchard with her family, describes losing her first tooth in tangy, colorful language, full of phrases that readers will find themselves repeating: "Hey-ho-howdy," "I'll get that little diddle-do!" and "I was popcorn-in-the-pan excited." She dreams of luxury items she will buy with money from the tooth fairy, but in the morning, her tooth is goneshe believe it has been stolenand there is no cash in sight. After vows to "open up a can of gotcha" and send the tooth-thief "airmail to the moon," Ora Mae discovers that she forgot to tuck the tooth beneath her pillow. Behind this book is a likable idea, but Ora Mae's helplessness and her fairly real distress go on a bit too long. And readers will have to create their own ending, since the book concludes as Ora Mae discovers the tooth in her pocket. Ora Mae, in Gammell's pictures, is a messy, rowdy heroine; exaggerations in the illustrations (Pa shaves out back in his boxer shorts), like those in the text, either mock or pay homage to a down-home, earthy lifestyle, depending on each reader's point-of-view. Ages 4-8.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Holiday House
• Publication date: 1988
• ISBN 10: 0823406830
• ISBN 13: 9780823406838
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 32
• Illustrator: Gammell Stephen