The Frazzle Family Finds a Way
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
Every member of the Frazzle family is disastrously forgetful. Mr. Frazzle forgets his trousers. Wags the dog can't find his bone, and Annie and Ben bring fishing poles and towels to school instead of their homework. Not even Aunt Rosemary with her organizational tips can help. But one day Annie has an idea that combines rhyme, recall, and song into a melodic way to remember in this warmheated tribute to compensating for weaknesses.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
"The Frazzles were forgetful," writes Bonwill (I Don't Want to Be a Pea!). "They forgot their umbrellas when it rained." Caldecott Medalist Gammell paints the raindrops as gorgeous splatters of grey-blue watercolor paint that speak volumes about the family's soggy sad-sackness. Enter Aunt Rosemary, a disheveled ball of fire, whose solution is "making notes and calendars and schedules and lists until it seemed that the whole house was covered in paper." It's little Annie Frazzle who hits on the true solution: mnemonics as song: "Apples, lettuce, bread, and beets,/ Chicken, carrots, chocolate treats," sings Annie on a shopping trip. "Milk and cheese and one thing more,/ Don't leave Grandpa at the store!" Everyone knows or belongs to a family that has at least a little Frazzle forgetfulness in its DNA, but the story's emphasis feels out of whack, with too much time given to the setup and to blowhard Aunt Rosemary, and not enough to the family's goofily logical, cobbled-together song-making (which Bonwill nails). Even Gammell's pictures with their freewheeling immediacy and radiant, unpredictable palette can't quite set the narrative aright. Ages 4 8.
