Lenny's book of everything by Karen Foxlee
Allen and Unwin, 2018. ISBN 9781760528706
(Age: 10 - Adult) Highly recommended. Themes: Brothers and sisters.
Physical impairments. Books and reading. Lenny's book of
everything is a powerful, emotional and warm-hearted story
seen through third-grader Lenny's eyes. She narrates in an intensely
authentic style, we feel her anger, her joy, experience her dogged
determination and her unwavering love of her younger brother Davey.
Set in the early seventies, Karen Foxlee perfectly presents a
credible world view, where men have just landed on the moon,
knowledge comes from books and encyclopedias and children experience
a freedom and responsibility different from today's world.
The Spink family live a hard knock life in a tiny apartment in
Grayford, Ohio, opposite the Greyhound bus station. Peter Lenard
Spink is a continually absent father looking for work in faraway
places. He disappears when Davey turns five and leaves all the
responsibilities to his hard-working wife Cynthia. Lenny's mother
knows her son Davey is different, she has a dark feeling in her
heart about his medical condition. Across the hall, their elderly
Hungarian neighbour Mrs Gaspar lovingly babysits the children
watching over the young boy as he rapidly grows from a healthy
toddler to a large child.
When their mother enters and wins a competition for a set of
Burrell's Build-It-at-Home Encyclopedias, their small world is
opened up to the majesty and wonder of nature, far-off lands,
animals, birds and insects. Each weekly delivery lets their
imaginations soar, taking them out of their small existence. Lenny
dwells on bugs and beetles, while Davey loves the birds of prey; he
creates an imaginary golden eagle, Timothy, who helps him cope with
his medical condition. Lenny and Davey dream of running away to
Great Bear Lake, living a self-subsistent existence. Mum's acerbic
letters to receive the free book covers to build the set, show her
strength of character and her unwillingness to give up. Slowly, they
become friends as she shares Davey's progressive illness with
Burrell's General Sales Manager Martha Brent.
Foxlee's decision to begin the chapters with a record of the date
and Davey's height are a portent of Davey's struggle with his form
of gigantism. The author's ability to take us on a deeply emotional
journey and place her story in a time before the impact of
technology, makes this a novel for readers from ten to adulthood.
The gorgeously detailed front cover with multiple layers, cut from
old encyclopedias that outline the flying eagle is a wonderful entry
into Lenny's book of everything. This book resonates with my
1960s childhood, when our world was made richer with a set of
encyclopedias.
Rhyllis Bignell