There are so few people still living in the slowly dying town of Patience, Kansas that there aren't enough kids to form a regular baseball team. And even if there were enough kids, they wouldn't have anyone to play against anyway. That doesn't stop them from holding a World Series.
A World Series like that could be the focus of another book. In Out of Patience, the Workup World Series is just a tiny, tiny part of the story.
Twelve-year-old Jake Waters is a fifth-generation Patience resident. His father is the local plumber who dreams of opening the American Toilet Museum. Jake just dreams of leaving town. Not just because the town is tiny and dying—but because Patience is cursed.
Over a hundred years ago, Jake's great-great-great grandfather installed the first flush toilet west of the Mississippi. One thing lead to another, and a fire-and-brimstone-type named Anders Cass called down a curse on the town—when the Plunger of Destiny returns, the final destruction will begin!
Jake's dad has a bit of an eBay problem when it comes to antique bathroom paraphenelia. The plunger returns.
Buried treasure, a manure farm, a hailstorm, a scary lady from the EPA and a tornado all figure in.
The writing style is very different, but the interwoven stories of different generations, buried treasure and short chapters reminded me of Holes. Brian Meehl's narration also occasionally made me think of Chris Crutcher—minus any swearing or violence. So—fans of Holes, baseball, and factoids will probably enjoy.
Oh, and if you need a good hook for a booktalk, I'd say that a tornado hitting a manure farm would probably do it for most 5th/6th-grade boys.
I have this at home! This is so rare that you review a book that my library has actually received! And I'll take the tornado hitting the manure idea for my booktalk to the seventh graders in the fall - I mean, they were just sixth graders a few months before, they can't have outgrown toilet humor yet.
Posted by: MotherReader | 06 July 2006 at 10:50 PM
Oh, that does sound hilarious!
Posted by: Jackie | 07 July 2006 at 12:40 PM
Hey, thanks for the nice mention on your site re my kids novel, "Out of Patience." I spent five years in Maine in the 70s in South Paris with Tony Montanaro's theater company. Love the place. Sometimes still wish I was back there in my teepee.
The quarry diving sequences in the novel are based on quarries in Maine.
Reading rules,
Brian M.
Posted by: Brian Meehl | 16 November 2006 at 09:00 PM
Sorry, but factoid actually means a fact that was not true until it was made up by the media (I learned this from the book The Word Detective.) Unless that's what you meant, but from context I don't think it is.
Posted by: Eh | 25 February 2007 at 07:45 PM
@Eh: True! At least, that was Norman Mailer's original definition. But as I'm sure you know, language evolves, and various dictionaries (including Merriam-Webster) now include "a briefly stated and usually trivial fact" as a secondary meaning of the word 'factoid'.
Posted by: Leila | 18 April 2013 at 08:27 PM