‘Eddie Pipper! Here, now!’
Oh, oh. In his bedroom, Eddie wiped his gluey hands down the sides of his grey school shorts. Glue dried clear. Mum would never know. He stood too quickly and his foot knocked the jar of glue. It tilted – and toppleed! Oh, no! He scooped some of the gooey mixture off the bare wooden floor and plopped it back into the container.
‘Eddie!’
He’d get the rest later. With any luck, it might soak into the floorboards and he wouldn’t have to clean it up.
‘Back soon, Might Penguin,’ he told the sloppy mess of paper strips glued to a couple of balloons.
Nearly-nine-year-old Eddie Pipper is passionate about penguins. He’d desperately love a penguin as a pet. And he does have a birthday coming up. But there are more than a few hurdles. First he has to remember to be responsible. Leaving your sister in a pool of ice and forgetting about her, isn’t responsible. No matter how much penguins like it, little sisters don’t. And then there’s the forgetting. His head is so full of penguins and how to get one of his own that there’s not much room for anything else. Like bus money. And Pet Parade.
Many parents will recognise the obsession that can overtake children and consume them to the exclusion of almost everything else. Many children will recognise that longing for something that seems to remain tantalisingly out of reach. And the seeming lack of empathy from those around them. Eddie is a dreamy, yet focussed child (very focussed!) and readers will cheer him on. Eddie Pipper is a new title in New Frontier’s Little Rockets series, targeted at lower- to mid-primary readers. Text is wide-spaced and colour illustrations are dispersed throughout. Stories are fully realised but not over-long, with achievable length chapters. Recommended for lower- to mid-primary readers. And anyone who longs for a pet of their own.
Eddie Pipper by Janeen Brian ill Emma Stuart
New Frontier Publishing 2012
ISBN: 9781921928215
review by Claire Saxby, Children’s Author
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