Professor Renoir's Collection of Oddities, Curiosities, and Delights

May 1, 2019
A 19th-century girl with an unusual physique makes herself a life. Babe was born "right as rain" in 1882 in a tiny Idaho town, but she grew atypically. Now 14, she's 6 feet, 9 inches and 342 pounds. Pa, greedy and cold, sells her to a carnival, where the carnival master promises she'll be a "uh, strongwoman act." She is, in fact, extremely strong, but he forces her into fakery (like all his acts) and harsh, brash showmanship. Babe's time in the cruel titular carnival--and after leaving it--show her as dogged, thoughtful, and loyal, with a tenacious sense of justice and a fierce protectiveness toward "critters." (Readers sensitive to animal pain should gird their loins.) The text humanely characterizes people perceived as freaks but undermines this with frequent objectification, spotlighting Babe's gigantism and her enemy-turned-friend Lotty's dwarfism: "the dwarf and the giant stared each other down"; "Nothing was more clumsy than a dancing giant with an awkward dwarf ducking in and out of her legs"; "the odd sight of a dwarf, a giant, and an elephant." The m-word, identified as a slur for dwarfs, is nevertheless frequently used. Babe's self-proclaimed "hick-like" speech is part lower-class stereotype ("libarry"), part creative ("ookus" for money). Everyone appears to be white. A heart-rending and memorable picture of 19th-century challenges for girls with unusual bodies--and for captive animals--though the narration sometimes uses carnival lenses itself. (author's note) (Historical fiction. 10-13)

COPYRIGHT(2019) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

July 1, 2019

Gr 3 Up-Consider a time when most people did not travel beyond the place where they were born. No television and internet meant that they would know little of the larger world. Picturing that existence makes it easier to understand why the arrival of a traveling show could cause such excitement. A giant? A dwarf riding an elephant? A trained bear and chimp? Platt takes readers into this earlier time, making it real enough to smell the hay and peanuts. Babe, close to seven feet tall at age 14, and tiny Lotty, about the size of a yardstick, make an odd pair. Known as "carnies" to some, freaks to others, the show performers walk a fine line between entertainment and exploitation, while townspeople meet them with equal parts fascination and fear. When "Professor" Renoir decides he cannot afford to feed Lotty's elephant or the animals Babe loves, the girls come up with a plan to free all five of them from his control. The story is divided thematically into three sections: Babe's home and the beginning of her time with Renoir; life with the traveling circus; and the search for a home and family. Babe's physical size magnifies the problems that all people face in looking for understanding and acceptance, and there are no easy answers for her. VERDICT The book is well-named, as it is full of vivid characters and settings that are odd, curious, but full of delights.-Lucinda Snyder Whitehurst, St. Christopher's School, Richmond

Copyright 2019 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.