Professor Renoir's Collection of Oddities, Curiosities, and Delights

by Randall Platt

Overview

A gripping historical fiction friendship story that will grab everyone by the heartstrings and never let go.

A giant, a dwarf, and three doomed circus animals . . .

By her fourteenth birthday, Babe Killingsworth measures 6ʹ9ʺ and weighs 342 pounds. In 1896, what other options does a giant have but to join a carnival?

Her only real talent is handling animals: “Critters is folks to me.” The cheap outfit her feckless father sells her off to offers critters galore; an escape from Neal, Idaho; and a bit of fame. It also opens the doorway to exploitation and neglect.

But Babe’s love for Euclid (a chimp) and Jupiter (a bear) keeps her anchored, and in Professor Renoir’s Collection of Oddities, Curiosities, and Delights, she is among her own kind.

Enter Carlotta Jones, billed as the world’s smallest girl, whose elephant act leaves much to be desired. At thirty inches tall, Carlotta is beautiful, spoiled, and demanding and has very little talent—Egypt, her elephant, dances better than she does.

How can a giant like Babe and a dwarf like Carlotta ever see eye to eye? They don’t at first, but soon they understand that a common enemy can bring anyone together—even a giant and a dwarf.

"Platt proves again she is unafraid to tackle intensely emotional issues for young readers in this beautifully written piece. Like its title, it inspires both curiosity and delight.” —Booklist

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780062643346
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	07/23/2019
Pages:	416
Product dimensions:	5.70(w) x 8.20(h) x 1.60(d)
Age Range:	8 - 12 Years

About the Author

Randall Platt likes to find the story in everything. She tries to wake up every day at four a.m. to write, and on a good day she will write fifteen to twenty-five pages. If she caps it off with a game of handball or a run, it’s a perfect day. She is an award-winning author of fiction for both adults and young adults, and her novels have enlightened readers on topics including the 1918 flu pandemic, life on the home front in World War II, life on an Oregon cattle ranch, and the world of baseball in 1898. She keeps a database of historically accurate slang terms, which allows the voices she uses in her writing to feel authentic. Visit her at plattbooks.com, where you can read about her favorite books and her tips for boosting creativity.

Editorial Reviews

A heart-rending and memorable picture of 19th-century challenges for girls with unusual bodies.” — Kirkus Reviews

Platt proves again she is unafraid to tackle intensely emotional issues for young readers in this beautifully written piece… Like its title, it inspires both curiosity and delight.” — Booklist

From the Publisher

Platt proves again she is unafraid to tackle intensely emotional issues for young readers in this beautifully written piece… Like its title, it inspires both curiosity and delight.

Booklist

Platt proves again she is unafraid to tackle intensely emotional issues for young readers in this beautifully written piece… Like its title, it inspires both curiosity and delight.

Booklist

07/01/2019

Gr 3 Up—Consider a time when most people did not travel beyond the place where they were born. No television and internet meant that they would know little of the larger world. Picturing that existence makes it easier to understand why the arrival of a traveling show could cause such excitement. A giant? A dwarf riding an elephant? A trained bear and chimp? Platt takes readers into this earlier time, making it real enough to smell the hay and peanuts. Babe, close to seven feet tall at age 14, and tiny Lotty, about the size of a yardstick, make an odd pair. Known as "carnies" to some, freaks to others, the show performers walk a fine line between entertainment and exploitation, while townspeople meet them with equal parts fascination and fear. When "Professor" Renoir decides he cannot afford to feed Lotty's elephant or the animals Babe loves, the girls come up with a plan to free all five of them from his control. The story is divided thematically into three sections: Babe's home and the beginning of her time with Renoir; life with the traveling circus; and the search for a home and family. Babe's physical size magnifies the problems that all people face in looking for understanding and acceptance, and there are no easy answers for her. VERDICT The book is well-named, as it is full of vivid characters and settings that are odd, curious, but full of delights.—Lucinda Snyder Whitehurst, St. Christopher's School, Richmond

School Library Journal

2019-04-10
A 19th-century girl with an unusual physique makes herself a life.

Babe was born "right as rain" in 1882 in a tiny Idaho town, but she grew atypically. Now 14, she's 6 feet, 9 inches and 342 pounds. Pa, greedy and cold, sells her to a carnival, where the carnival master promises she'll be a "uh, strongwoman act." She is, in fact, extremely strong, but he forces her into fakery (like all his acts) and harsh, brash showmanship. Babe's time in the cruel titular carnival—and after leaving it—show her as dogged, thoughtful, and loyal, with a tenacious sense of justice and a fierce protectiveness toward "critters." (Readers sensitive to animal pain should gird their loins.) The text humanely characterizes people perceived as freaks but undermines this with frequent objectification, spotlighting Babe's gigantism and her enemy-turned-friend Lotty's dwarfism: "the dwarf and the giant stared each other down"; "Nothing was more clumsy than a dancing giant with an awkward dwarf ducking in and out of her legs"; "the odd sight of a dwarf, a giant, and an elephant." The m-word, identified as a slur for dwarfs, is nevertheless frequently used. Babe's self-proclaimed "hick-like" speech is part lower-class stereotype ("libarry"), part creative ("ookus" for money). Everyone appears to be white.

A heart-rending and memorable picture of 19th-century challenges for girls with unusual bodies—and for captive animals—though the narration sometimes uses carnival lenses itself. (author's note) (Historical fiction. 10-13)

Kirkus Reviews