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Flora & Ulysses the illuminated adventures
by DiCamillo, Kate,
 CD Audiobook 
CD Audiobook
CD J FIC DIC
Random House/Listening Library,, [2013]
4 sound discs (4 hours, 30 minutes) : digital ; 4 3/4 in..
 
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Holy unanticipated occurrences! A cynic meets an unlikely superhero in a genre-breaking new novel by master storyteller Kate DiCamillo. It begins, as the best superhero stories do, with a tragic accident that has unexpected consequences. The squirrel never saw the vacuum cleaner coming, but self-described cynic Flora Belle Buckman, who has read every issue of the comic book Terrible things can happen to you!, is the just the right person to step in and save him. What neither can predict is that Ulysses (the squirrel) has been born anew, with powers of strength, flight, and misspelled poetry--and that Flora will be changed too, as she discovers the possibility of hope and the promise of a capacious heart.

Syndetic Solutions - School Library Journal Review for ISBN Number 9780449015131
Flora and Ulysses: the Illuminated Adventures
Flora and Ulysses: the Illuminated Adventures
by DiCamillo, Kate; Sands, Tara (Read by)
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School Library Journal Review

Flora and Ulysses: the Illuminated Adventures

School Library Journal


(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Gr 3-7-Flora starts off her 10th summer by promising her mother that she'll spend more time reading real books, and less time poring over the pages of her favorite superhero comics. But neither she nor her mother could have predicted that her summer would be one long superhero adventure, starring none other than Flora and her new pet squirrel, Ulysses. Ulysses gains super-squirrel strength after being sucked into a vacuum cleaner, and he changes the Buckman family's lives, renewing a sense of hope and optimism in Flora. Fans of the title's print version (Candlewick, 2013) will likely be disappointed by its audio adaptation. The novel features a number of fun cartoons, and does not translate well without the accompanying artwork, which plays a significant role in telling the story. While reader Tara Sands makes a valid attempt to differentiate male and female characters, she does not quite pull it off. The men in the novel come off sounding hokey and exaggerated. While DiCamillo's work shines on paper, the excessive use of dialogue tags, and absence of corresponding artwork, make this novel a poor choice as a read aloud.-Jennifer Furuyama, Pendleton Public Library, OR (c) Copyright 2014. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Syndetic Solutions - Publishers Weekly Review for ISBN Number 9780449015131
Flora and Ulysses: the Illuminated Adventures
Flora and Ulysses: the Illuminated Adventures
by DiCamillo, Kate; Sands, Tara (Read by)
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Publishers Weekly Review

Flora and Ulysses: the Illuminated Adventures

Publishers Weekly


(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

When a squirrel is sucked inside a neighbor's vacuum cleaner, Flora Belle Buckman-who is still recovering from her parents' divorce-puts down her favorite comic book (Terrible Things Can Happen to You!) and springs into action. But once she has saved the squirrel-whom she names Ulyssess-Flora soon discovers that the animal has some magical powers. Narrator Sands delivers a charming and lighthearted performance that listeners will love. Sands's ability to create colorful, over-the-top characters is an ideal match for DiCamillo's quirky novel, and the voices she produces here are pitch-perfect. This is a fun-filled audio experience. Ages 10-up. A Candlewick hardcover. (Sept) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Syndetic Solutions - New York Times Review for ISBN Number 9780449015131
Flora and Ulysses: the Illuminated Adventures
Flora and Ulysses: the Illuminated Adventures
by DiCamillo, Kate; Sands, Tara (Read by)
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New York Times Review

Flora and Ulysses: the Illuminated Adventures

New York Times


September 15, 2013

Copyright (c) The New York Times Company

when i meet a new character in a children's book, I often ask myself: Is this a child I would want to drive to a birthday party? The answer is most often a resounding no. Then along came Flora Belle Buckman, the 10-year-old star of Kate DiCamillo's madcap chapter book, "Flora and Ulysses." Unlike some of her freshas-paint fictional counterparts, Flora has gravitas. She is a self-proclaimed "natural-born cynic" with a misanthropic streak reminiscent of Harriet the Spy. She's not a grouch exactly, but she is world-weary, perhaps as a result of her parents' recent divorce. Like many a cynic, Flora is skeptical of love; but she has a passion for words, particularly those that appear inside thought bubbles. Conveniently, her mother, Phyllis, a romance novelist, is so distracted that Flora has plenty of time to immerse herself in what Phyllis refers to as "the idiotic high jinks of comics." Flora's favorites are "The Illuminated Adventures of the Amazing Incandesto!" and its companion, "Terrible Things Can Happen to You!" She lives by advice gleaned from their pages. Her mantra: "Do not hope; instead, observe." One day, while she's lost in her comic book universe - cheerfully illuminated by K.G. Campbell - Flora witnesses an amazing thing. Her neighbor, Tootie Tickham, is pulled into the yard by the power of her birthday present, a Ulysses SuperSuction, Multi-Terrain 2000X vacuum cleaner. In an uproarious mash-up, the appliance-gone-wrong ingests a squirrel, which it quickly regurgitates, minus some fur but empowered with the gift of thought and super-squirrel strength. "Holy bagumba," Flora says. Truer words have never been spoken. "Flora and Ulysses" alternates between Flora's perspective and the squirrel's, which is infused with Zen philosophy à la rodent. One snapshot: "His brain felt larger, roomier. It was as if several doors in the dark room of his self (doors he hadn't even known existed) had suddenly been flung wide. Everything was shot through with meaning, purpose, light." Flora names the squirrel Ulysses and smuggles him into her house, attracting nary a glance from her inattentive mother. Flora, caught in the purgatory of tweenhood, missing her father and fed up with her mother's nagging, finds Ulysses to be the perfect companion. He's adorable and unthreatening, and other than tapping out cryptic messages and poems on Phyllis's electric typewriter, he keeps his deep thoughts to himself. The two embark on a series of adventures together - none of them earthshatteringly exciting, but each distinguished by an emotional depth that is appropriately Joycean (and, fear not, appropriate for kids). Flora and her squirrel mostly stick close to home, where they team up with William Spiver, Tootie Tickham's blind nephew, to protect Ulysses from the now cognizant adults who want to return him to the wild. Flora is certain that Ulysses is a superhero; William is harder to convince. The tension mounts when Flora's father, George, comes to pick her up for a visit. Phyllis dispatches the pair with explicit instructions for George to put Ulysses in a sack and hit him over the head with a shovel. But first they stop at Giant Do-Nut, where the squirrel takes a flying leap out of his shoe box and into a waitress's hair. Despite the stress of not knowing whether Ulysses will outwit his arch-nemesis, Phyllis, it is fascinating to have a squirrel's eye view on the world, especially when the squirrel is a poet at heart. The smells! The doughnut selection! The wonderful imagery of sunny side up eggs ! Occasionally, reading "Flora and Ulysses" gives you that whiplash feeling of watching TV with someone who changes the channel every two seconds. The chapters are short and choppy and the antics so off-the-wall, parents looking for a peaceful bedtime story to read aloud may be surprised by how riled up young listeners get. But isn't that the fun of DiCamillo's books? In "Flora and Ulysses," longtime fans will find a happy marriage of Mercy Watson's warmth and wackiness and Edward Tulane's gentle life lessons. In Flora, they will find a girl worth knowing, and one they will remember. She is welcome in my minivan anytime. ? ELISABETH EGAN is the books editor at Glamour.

 
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