Push Monkey

Valerie Polanski, age 17, likes blue hair, black skinny jeans and nose rings. She swears too much and has a thing about cool words. Everyone calls her Sunny. She’s getting a tattoo, or two, as soon as she graduates. Her mom wants her to go directly to college, but Sunny has other plans.


She lands a job as a push monkey—human-powered-ride operator—at her local Renaissance festival. From her fellow workers she learns of a whole festival circuit, and over mom’s objections, hits the road with the ride company.


As she travels from fair to fair with Flying Horse Production’s motley road crew, Sunny quickly adapts to the “rennie” lifestyle. She learns the rigors of prolonged tent living, the social life marked by Bizarre Bazaars and Funky Formals, the short-lived “fair affairs” and the rules for survival the road veterans call “The Code of the West.”


But others are working to bring Sunny’s freewheeling new life to an end: her controlling mother, and a shady rennie bearing a grudge toward both her and the business for which she works. Her father’s unexpected arrival at a fair presents a hard choice: lose her new life and new love interest, or squander the possibility of a relationship with her dad.