The Adventures of a Girl Called Bicycle

July 16, 2018
When a three-year-old girl in a faded pink t-shirt with the word bicycle on it shows up at the Mostly Silent Monastery in Washington, D.C., Sister Wanda takes her in. The girl’s fondness for the word leads Sister Wanda to give her the unusual moniker for a name, and Bicycle eventually acquires a bike of her own, a hefty orange number named Clunk. When Bicycle is 12, Sister Wanda worries about her lack of friends and arranges to send her to sleepaway camp at the Friendship Factory (“Three Guaranteed Friendships or Your Money Back”). Bicycle refuses and takes to the road with Clunk instead, mapping a route to San Francisco to meet her hero, Polish cycling racer Zbig, at the Blessing of the Bicycles. Along the way, she picks up a talkative ghost, procures a bike that can launch missiles and write, and flees from a woman in black. She also cultivates friend after friend, one mile at a time, as the story elegantly blends elements of mystery, adventure, and fantasy. Debut author Uss, a long-distance cyclist herself, effectively portrays the call—and toll—of self-reliance and the open road, and fashions a resolute heroine to root for. Ages 8–12. Agent: Ammi-Joan Paquette, Erin Murphy Literary.

Narrator Jennifer Barnhart makes listeners care about a girl whose actual name is Bicycle. Bicycle was abandoned as a baby at the Mostly Silent Monastery in Washington, DC. Now 12, Bicycle is obsessed with meeting her hero, Tour de France winner Zbigniew Sienkiewicz. When she is sent to sleepaway camp, she runs away and sets out on a cross-country bike tour to San Francisco to meet Zbig. A grand adventure follows in which Bicycle relies on the unlikely kindness of many strangers along the way. Barnhart deftly handles a mixed bag of colorful characters including a hillbilly Civil War ghost, a Kentucky Derby announcer, a nonagenarian bike mechanic, a haughty estate auctioneer, a French chef, and the sweet optimism of Bicycle herself. S.C. � AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine