My one hundred adventures / Polly Horvath; read by Tai Alexandra Ricci.— New York : Listening Library, p2008. 5 sound discs (5 hr., 29 min.) : digital ; 4 3/4 in.
Unabridged.
Compact disc
ISBN: 9780739371626
1. Babysitters – Fiction. 2. Beaches – Fiction. 3. Massachusetts – Fiction. 4. Prayer – Fiction. 5. Single-parent families – Fiction. 6. Summer – Fiction.
813.54
After hearing Nellie Phipps extol the power of prayer at church, twelve-year-old Jane prays for adventures, at least a hundred of them. She also wants a sign that her prayers have been heard: a purple circle in the sky. The next Sunday she gets her sign and her first adventure. While distributing Bibles Nellie tells her to jump in the basket of an untended hot air balloon with the Bibles. Then she’s set loose to drop Bibles on anyone along her path of flight. As she ascends she looks up at the circle of the purple balloon against the blue of the sky. Jane starts to realize that adventures and adults can booth be very unpredictable and full of surprises.
Jane and her younger brothers and sisters live on the seashore with her mother an unmarried poet. She’s blackmailed into babysitting an unruly pack of children by her ne’er do well neighbor who accuses Jane of beaning her baby with a Bible. While doing this unwelcome chore she encounters three men who she has reason to think might be her father. Nellie Phipps, her preacher, continually drags her along on her New Age spiritual quests. All the adults in her life are eccentric, and making sense out of it all is a challenge for Jane, which Ricci’s somewhat raspy and exasperated vocal narration characterizes well. Horvath’s playfully imaginative story is the equal of Newbery honor winning Everything on a Waffle.
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