Mister and Me (Puffin Chapters) - Softcover

Holt, Kimberly Willis

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0698118693 ISBN 13: 9780698118690

Publisher: Puffin Books, 2000

Synopsis

Jolene's family was just Momma and Grandpa until big, loud Leroy Redfield started taking Momma dancing. Jolene refuses to call him anything but "Mister." Without a name, he isn't a real person to her. But then Jolene learns that Mister wants to marry Momma. Is there anything Jolene can do to make him go away?

"The warmth and love in the Johnson household envelops the novel... Jolene's willingness to face the uncertainties of her future may well give courage to readers confronting sea changes of their own."-Publishers Weekly

Awards:

( New York Public Library "100 Titles for Reading and Sharing"
( A Texas Bluebonnet Master List Book

About this title

About the Author:

Kimberley Willis Holt is the author of My Louisiana Sky and the winner of the 1999 National Book Award for When Zachary Beaver Came to Town. She lives in Amarillo, Texas.
Leonard Jenkins lives in New York City.

From Publishers Weekly:

Holt (My Louisiana Sky) returns to Louisiana for this touching slice of life in a 1940 mill town. Young Jolene Jasmine Johnson can't change certain things about her world, like having to sit in the rear balcony at the movie theater, and acting polite to "Miz" Logan, the mill owner's wife for whom Jolene's mother sews dresses. But the outspoken heroine believes that she can keep things happy at home. That is, until logger Leroy Redfield, a man "dark as a starless night, tall and thick as a long-leaf pine tree," comes courting her widowed mother. Holt handily employs Jolene's first-person narration to focus more on the music of Louis Armstrong, community dances and family life than on societal clashes; the warmth and love in the Johnson household envelops the novel. The author balances Jolene's blatant displays of resentment toward her mother's beau (at one point, she cuts up the expensive fabric he has bought for Jolene's mother) with patience and tolerance from Leroy ("plain Mister" as Jolene calls him), and he eventually secures his future stepdaughter's trust. Jolene's acceptance of her mother's upcoming marriage comes gradually and convincingly, and her willingness to face the uncertainties of her future may well give courage to readers confronting sea changes of their own. Illustrations not seen by PW. Ages 7-11.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Puffin Books
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0698118693
• ISBN 13: 9780698118690
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 80
• Illustrator: Jenkins Leonard