The Busy Life of Ernestine Buckmeister
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- £5.99
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- £5.99
Publisher Description
Ernestine is in over her head. Monday through Sunday, Ernestine's week is packed with after-school lessons—tuba, knitting, sculpting, water ballet, yoga, yodeling, and karate. Overwhelmed and exhausted, Ernestine decides to take matters into her own hands and heads off to the park with her Nanny where she builds a fort, watches the clouds, and plays all kinds of unstructured and imaginative games. But when a teacher calls Ernestine's mom to report that she has not shown up for yodeling, her parents search everywhere until at last they hear their daughter's laughter coming from the park. Ernestine tells her parents what a wonderful afternoon she's had, and explains her plight, asking, "I like my lessons, but can't I stop some of them?" This saga hilariously captures the dilemma of the modern-day over-scheduled child in riotous color and absurd extremes. A delightful heroine, Ernestine will be sure to put “play” back on everyone's agenda, demonstrating that in today's overscheduled world, everyone needs the joy of play and the simple wonders of childhood.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Lodding makes her children's book debut with an addition to the growing bookshelf of titles about overbooked and overworked children. And like many of its predecessors, its message is more for the parents making the schedules and paying for the after-school classes than for kids who, like Ernestine, innately know that bouncing on a trampoline and playing imaginary games outside beats an exhausting week packed with organized activities. Both Lodding and Beaky (the Hailey Twitch series) deploy abundant humor to make the story's earnest message more palatable. Lodding's prose is studded with punny quips and names (Ernestine's instructors include sculptor Clay Lumpkin, yodeling expert Little Old Lady Hoo, and yoga guru Prakash Pretzel). For her part, Beaky provides acrylic caricatures that really take off once Ernestine and her nanny start to mix up her schedule (Ernestine is seen playing tuba during swim lessons and accidentally giving her knitting teacher a karate kick) and when Ernestine's parents try to track her down after Ernestine and Nanny O'Dear play hooky on a grassy hilltop. Ages 5 7.
