22 May 2010 WHAT HAPPENED ON FOX STREET by Tricia Springstubb, HarperCollins/Balzer + Bray, August 2010, 224p., ISBN: 978-0-06-198635-2  

"If you hear that same sweet song again will you know why?

Anyone who sings a tune so sweet is passing by.

Laugh in the sunshine, sing;

Cry in the dark, fly through the night"

-- Hunter/Garcia, "Bird Song"

Almost-ten-year-old Mo (Maureen Jewel) Wren is a thinker.  And this summer there will be quite a nest full of surprises and potential changes to think about.

"What was stupid about trying hard, about taking a risk, about wishing to fly?  Everything, that's what!  It was worse than stupid to gamble with gravity.  Stay put, stay on the ground, stay safe!"

Mo has spent her entire life on Fox Street: five houses shoulder-to-shoulder on either side of a road in northern Ohio, whose dead end overlooks an expansive, forested ravine.  Mo has had to spend the last three of these years motherless.  And when past changes have had such a devastating impact upon one's young life, you can come to fear more of them -- like when your best friend arrives for the summer and you discover that she seems to suddenly be thinking and acting differently.

"Sometimes change comes at you like a broadside accident.

There is chaos in the order, random things you can't prevent."

-- Joni Mitchell, "Good Friends"

Mo's best friend is Mercedes Jasmine Walcott who lives downstate during the school year and then travels to Fox Street to spend summers with the ailing maternal grandmother who lives across the street from the Wren house.  But this could well be the friends' last summer together here.  

Mercedes' mother Monette, who was raised on Fox Street -- a gifted child in, what was, the first family of color to live in the neighborhood -- has just married for the first time and is now going to belatedly get to achieve her dream of attending college.

"Mercedes had never known her father.  When Monette discovered she was pregnant, she'd moved away from Fox Street and never looked back.  She refused to even say who he was -- he was sweet and he was gone, that was all the information Mercedes had.  Here was yet one more way Merce and Mo were alike, beside having identical initials, and being born the very same autumn, and both adoring Fox Street: They were both half orphans."

Mo has a fast-moving, bottle-collecting, malapropism-spewing little sister named Dottie, who is affectionately known throughout the neighborhood as the Wild Child.  They have a father who is clearly unhappy in his job with the municipal water authority and is still clearly mourning the loss of his daughters' spirited and absentminded mother.

"The cardinal broke off its song midnote, and the bird arrowed out of sight.  The yard grew cemetery quiet."

We also meet other residents of Fox Street including the wild, trouble-making Baggot boys (The oldest is actually a sensitive skateboarder who clearly adores Mo.); Mrs. Petrone, who works for the funeral parlor and does haircutting at her home; Mr. Duong, the fix-it man; and Ms. Hugg, the piano player.

And then there is Mo's enigmatic, white-haired next door neighbor, Gertrude Steinbott, whom Mo refers to as Starchbutt:

"Mrs. Steinbott whiled away her hours pruning shrubs within an inch of their lives and knitting, though who all those itchy hats and scarves could be for remained a mystery.  No one ever came to visit her.  Her life was solitary as the unplanet Pluto."Why was she so alone?  And so stone hearted?  Which came first?  It was as hard to determine as the chicken and the egg, a problem Mo had given some thought." 

WHAT HAPPENED ON FOX STREET is one of those great stories with a helping of mystery that is so much fun to read the second time through: Now that I'd seen the completed puzzle, I went back again and laughed aloud as I encountered all of the clues whose significance I missed the first time around.

This is also one of those memorable stories in which the world revolves around one little neighborhood.  I remember back when I was nine, how I spent many contented afternoons reading about the happenings on Klickitat Street.  All these years later, I still recall how thoroughly I enjoyed being immersed in those tales.  Such is the feeling I've just gotten, having had the pleasure of spending quality time hanging out on Fox Street (and in the adjoining woods).

"Being a thinker was a various thing.  Sometimes you felt like a turtle, with a nice, private built-in place to shelter.  Other times, it was like having a bucket stuck on your head, making the world clang and echo and never stop."

This is an absolute must-have for elementary collections. 

Richie Partington, MLIS
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