The Secret Order of the Gumm Street Girls
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- £5.49
Publisher Description
For seven years, bad luck has followed Ivy around like a dog on a leash. Her father disappeared, her mother is a washed–up beauty–pageant winner, and now Viola and her mother have moved into a raqmshackle house on Gumm Street. Ivy's new neighbors–bookish Pru, stuck–up Cat, and wannabe adventurer Franny–are worse than unfriendly. But then a mysterious pair of ruby red slippers turn up, and the four girls are swept away...not to OZ, but to the jaw–droppingly strange lands of SPOZ, and SPUDZ, and OOZE, pursued by the fashionably mad Cha–Cha Staccato, who bears a frightening resemblance to a certain wicked witch....
Ages: 8 –12
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Primavera (Auntie Claus) takes her time getting to the heart of her tale, narrated by a humorous yet disarmingly wise omniscient narrator. In the town of Sherbet, four girls ("all about ten or eleven years old") live on Gumm Street: prudent Prudence Gumm, bookish and severe; Franny Muggs, voyeur and daredevil; Cat Lemonjello, whose mother wrote a hipster version of the I Ching ("Darkness is coming at you, dude"); and Ivy Diamond, new to the neighborhood, whose broken-mirror-imposed seven years of bad luck are soon to be up. Ivy holds the key to the story; piano teacher Mr. Staccato (who claims to be 122 years old) tells her that she is the rightful heir of two red shoes laced with mystical powers and tied to Hollywood's production of The Wizard of Oz (Judy Garland fans will appreciate the coy use of her given name, Frances Gumm). When a fierce storm rips through town, the girls find themselves facing a wicked witch named Cha Cha who wants those shoes. From there it's a postmodern, surreal reworking of Baum's classic, significantly buoyed by the author's cheerful pen-and-inks, which recall the work of Jules Feiffer. In a nod to the Hogwarts hierarchy, the girls' school is divided into four houses, each named for one of the founder's favorite sandwiches, and instead of a sorting hat, a "large glowing computer" puts the girls where they will "find unique talent." Despite the author's overriding emphasis on humor, Primavera is at her best in occasional flashes of poignancy as in the omniscient narrator's breathtaking passage about the emotional power of family heirlooms. Ages 8-12.
