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

by Randall Platt, Rebecca Gibel (Read by), TBD (Read by)

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781982663353
Publisher:	HarperCollins Publishers
Publication date:	07/23/2019
Edition description:	Unabridged
Product dimensions:	5.20(w) x 5.70(h) x (d)
Age Range:	9 - 12 Years

About the Author

Rebecca Gibel (a.k.a. Kasha Kensington) is a audiobook narrator and stage actress who has performed in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Camelot (IRNE Award nomination), Urinetown (Denver Post Ovation Award nomination), and Othello. She won the Denver Post Readers’ Choice Award for Best Year by an Actress. She is a graduate of the Brown University Trinity Rep MFA acting program, where she was the Stephen Sondheim Fellow.

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 www.plattbooks.com, where you can read about her favorite books and her tips for boosting creativity.

Editorial Reviews

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