Ferris
Kate DiCamillo
Walker Books

This story, set I think in the late 20th century, unfolds around ten year old Ferris (Emma Phineas Wilkey), so called because she was born beneath a ferris wheel at the fairground. Ferris is sensitive, serious and a lover of words, the last thanks to her 4th grade teacher.

It’s an eventful summer for certain. It was then that a ghost appeared to her grandmother Charisse, that Ferris’s six year old sister, Pinky, decided to become an outlaw and that her Uncle Ted left Aunt Shirley, his wife to live in the basemen of Ferris’s home, hoping to paint a masterpiece. Oh yes and it was the summer that Dad declared there was a racoon in the attic; moreover Charisse said she was unwell and agreed to see a doctor.

Add to the mix Ferris’s best friend, Billy Jackson a pianist who hears music in his head all the time, Boomer the dog, teacher Mrs Mielk, Billy’s dad Big Billy Jackson and Charisse’s oft quoted assertion that “every good story is a love story” and you realise that those words definitely apply to Kate DiCamillo’s moving, memorable, quirky tale. Assuredly there’s love in abundance, but there’s also reunion, plenty of humour supplied mainly due to Pinky’s misdemeanours, as well as loss and birth.