Worlds Apart

March 1, 2005
Gr 4-7 -Fernie and his best friend [from "Fearless Fernie: Hanging Out with Fernie and Me" (Putnam, 2002)] are off on an imaginary trip around the world. The conversational style of the free verse exhibits the same humor and insight that will engage readers, though the premise of this collection doesn't work quite as well as its predecessor. The opening poem, "Itching to Travel," sets the boys on their journey: "We itched to go places, /To double-tie our shoes and roll away on skateboards./And why? We knew only our back and front yards, /School and the playground -&So one morning/Fergie and me jumped off the roof of the doghouse/And started up the street, our shadows struggling to keep up." They imagine themselves from San Francisco to Hawaii, hitting countries on every continent until they wind up back home. Their experiences are as silly and stereotypical as one would expect from these characters, oddly defeating the purpose of the travelogue -from tattoos in the Philippines to safari in Kenya, from a camel encounter in Aswan to kilts in Scotland. It's funny, but not, in the end, very interesting, and strays from the wonderful realism that connected readers in the first title. Oh well -kids who enjoyed the first one will appreciate being reunited with the characters." -Nina Lindsay, Oakland Public Library, CA"

Copyright 2005 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

March 15, 2005
Gr. 4-6. The two middle-school best friends who appeared in " Fearless Fernie " (2001) are together again, but this time they leave behind their backyards and their school and take off to tour the world. Whether the boys are on safari in Kenya, on the beach in Hawaii, sharing a salami sausage snack in Sicily, or craving Mexican food in Taiwan, the simple, mischievous poems and black-and-white cartoonlike art show that the imaginary global adventures are never really far from home. It's the friendship story, both silly and affectionate, that is the real subject. The most moving poem, "The Road Not Taken . . . in Peru," a takeoff on Robert Frost's classic, finds the friends choosing separate paths, then retracing steps ("He went down mine, me his") to find themselves wiser for traveling both roads. (Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2005, American Library Association.)

July 1, 2005
Fernie and his nameless narrator friend take a free-verse and freely associative trip around the world in this companion to "Fearless Fernie". The sightseeing and related high jinks are frequently goofy; the book is an authentic boy's-eye view of daydreamed foreign adventure and the rewards of best-friendship. Scattered pen-and-ink drawings honor both the humor and amity of the poems.

(Copyright 2005 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)

May 1, 2005
Fernie and his nameless narrator friend take a free-verse and freely associative trip around the world in this traveling companion to Fearless Fernie: Hanging Out with Fernie and Me (rev. 7/02). The poet referees a boxing match in Australia ("Fernie bowed to the kangaroo / Where I sat oh so comfortably in his pouch); escapes crocodiles in the Molopo River ("They were hungry for us, and we were hungry for life"); and visits the Mona Lisa ("I hoped I could sell my smile to an artist"). The sightseeing and related high jinks are frequently goofy, and throughout the book is an authentic boy's-eye view of daydreamed foreign adventure and the rewards of best-friendship: "Even in sleep, we rolled on our cots / And had something to say." Scattered pen-and-ink drawings honor both the humor and amity of the poems.

(Copyright 2005 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)