Drizzle

by Kathleen Van Cleve

Book Overview

Eleven-year-old Polly Peabody knows her family's world-famous rhubarb farm is magical. The plants taste like chocolate, jewels appear in the soil, bugs talk to her, and her best friend is a rhubarb... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0803733623
• ISBN13: 9780803733626
• Release Date: March 2010
• Publisher: Dial Books for Young Readers
• Length: 358 Pages
• Weight: 1.10 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 5.9" x 8.5"
• Age Range: 8 to 12 years
• Grade Range: Grades 3 to 7

Customer Reviews

A Wonderful Read

Okay. So usually this is the part of the review where I tell you what the book is about, except I'm not sure how to succinctly summarize Drizzle. It is, and I mean this in the best possible way, unlike any other book I've ever read. That was what attracted me to it. The truth is, I can't even really tell you that much about it without spoiling the whole thing, and I don't want to do that. Mrs. Van Cleve has crafted a work of stunning originality and you owe it to yourself to put Drizzle on your reading list. Welcome to Rupert's world famous rhubarb farm. It is a place different from any you've ever encountered . Mrs. Van Cleve never specifies that Oompa Loompas don't work there and I prefer to imagine they do. The rhubarb grown at Rupert's farm tastes like chocolate, but it's still a vegetable so your parents can't get mad. Some of the rhubarb is grown for medicinal purposes and shows tremendous promise as a cure for cancer among other ailments. And there's giant rhubarb that's really helping out with the hole in the ozone layer. But I haven't even told you the most interesting parts! If Hogwarts were a farm, it would be Rupert's Rhubarb Farm. It's a popular tourist destination, and it isn't hard to see why. There's a full scale version of the White House on the premises, and if that doesn't do it for you, check out their castle. There's also a certain Dark House that may or may not be haunted. And there's a giant "peace" maze to wonder through and an umbrella ride. It rains every Monday at 1:00pm, except the one Monday it doesn't. Oh, and get this, there's a lake in which no one can drown. One boy managed to stay underwater an entire hour and was just fine. All of these fantastic revelations about the farm take some telling and it is worth noting that the main conflict of the novel isn't really introduced until page 75, which is practically waiting until the sequel as far as the pacing in middle grade novels goes. And that's the thing that really got me jazzed about Drizzle. Kathleen Van Cleve brazenly breaks all the rules and displays uncommon courage for a middle grade writer and she pulls off everything. Her book, were it in the hands of a lesser writer, often flirts with disaster, but Van Cleve's got the chops to make it rain, as it were. For starters, Drizzle is 358 pages, which puts it in YA range according to many standards, but the main character is eleven and the book is recommended for grades 4-6, clearly upper middle grade or tween range. I won't pretend to understand how Van Cleve pulled off all of her tricks, but as for how she got away with delaying until page 75 to introduce the main plot when so many of us labor to work it in by page 5, that I get. Now to be fair, she does foreshadow the main plot and she opens the novel with this scene: But then, on one rainy Monday afternoon, the twentieth of September, I found her, lying faceup, in between the P and E of the PEACE maze. The toes of her silly slippers pointed up to the gr

A great book for all

We recently purchased this book for the students at my K-8 inner city school. We often find ourselves struggling to convince our students to read books(especially of this length), but the kids dove right into Drizzle. They were taken away by the magical farm and the powers Polly soon discovers. The conflict her family faces is believable and made her real to the kids. This book is so versatile that I am reading it to my six year old in small chunks and she hangs onto Polly's every word. Buy this book for any kid who likes to dream!

A whimsical fantasy

Kathleen Van Cleve's DRIZZLE tells of preteen Polly, who knows her family's rhubarb farm is unusual. Here the rhubarb tastes like chocolate, diamonds sprout from the ground, and it rains every Monday at 1PM. When the rains suddenly stop, the farm begins to fall apart, and it's up to Polly to restore its magic in this whimsical fantasy.

Something good can always happen

Polly Peabody believes in magic, and it's a good thing too, because she lives on a farm where the insects talk (or spell, really), the weeping willows really weep, the rhubarb plants communicate and it rains every Monday at 1:00. Just on their farm. All is not well though, because Polly often feels like a freak because she lives on such a magical place and when one day it quits raining, she must discover her true power so she can save not only the farm, but her family as well. This is a very well written book that was captivating even for a grown up like me. What kid (or grown up for that matter) hasn't dreamed of living in an actual castle, and having conversations with animals? The author does a great job here of portraying a magical environment with just the right note of whimsy that makes the whole tale just mesmerizing. There's a great environmental message here about keeping in touch with the land and how everything is inter-related, but it's not heavy handed. The characters are well drawn and Polly is a character that I think every "tweener" can identify with, be it boy or girl. There's quite a bit of what I would call "mysticism" here so parents be forewarned if you frown on that sort of thing. I really liked how the author included elements of Emerson's Self Reliance. Now this is a children's author that doesn't talk down to her readers. All in all it's a great fantasy that will be perfect for those kids who find Harry Potter and the like to maybe be a bit too dark. A recommend for anyone 8 and up who would like a good uplifting tale.

Great, great read

My 8 year old son just tore through this book. He's a picky reader, but he LOVED this one. To say that Drizzle is just another kids book is to say that the Brooklyn Bridge is just another bridge. Buy this book now. It feels like an old friend and will probably become a classic.