Canning Season by Polly Horvath

From Barnes & Noble

This National Book Award winner tells the story of Ratchet Clark, a 13-year-old Pensacola, Florida, teen, whose uncaring mother foists her on two elderly relatives in Maine. What begins as a gruesome summer entrapment turns ever so gradually into a memorable, if offbeat experience. The vividly drawn twin sister hosts, Tilly and Penpen, are clearly the main attraction: They lace their family anecdotes with ghoulish images and salty language.

From the Publisher

Love under trying circumstances

One night out of the blue, Ratchet Clark’s ill-natured mother tells her that Ratchet will be leaving their Pensacola apartment momentarily to take the train up north. There she will spend the summer with her aged relatives Penpen and Tilly, inseparable twins who couldn’t look more different from each other. Staying at their secluded house, Ratchet is treated to a passel of strange family history and local lore, along with heaps of generosity and care that she has never experienced before. Also, Penpen has recently espoused a new philosophy – whatever shows up on your doorstep you have to let in. Through thick wilderness, down forgotten, bear-ridden roads, come a variety of characters, drawn to Penpen and Tilly’s open door. It is with vast reservations that the cautious Tilly allows these unwelcome guests in. But it turns out that unwelcome guests may bring the greatest gifts.

By turns dark and humorous, Polly Horvath offers adolescent readers enough quirky characters and outrageous situations to leave them reeling!

Publishers Weekly

In our Best Books citation, PW wrote, "Unpredictable and compelling, this outrageous but openhearted novel involves a 13-year-old girl sent to a remote bear-infested region in Maine to live with distant nonagenarian twin cousins." Ages 12-up. (Oct.) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Teens' Top Ten nominator, age 15 - VOYA

The caring aunts are an important part of this wonderful book, great for a quiet afternoon read. VOYA CODES: 3Q 3P J (Readable without serious defects; Will appeal with pushing; Junior High, defined as grades 7 to 9). 2003, Farrar Straus Giroux, 208p,

School Library Journal

Gr 6-9-Horvath outdoes herself in this tale of lonely, friendless Ratchet Clark, who lives with her uncaring mother in Pensacola, FL. One night, out of the blue, Henriette packs her daughter onto the train to spend the summer with two elderly relatives, twins Tilly and Penpen, who live in an area of Maine so remote that servant-eating bears are a constant menace. Here, with her outlandishly eccentric great-aunts, Ratchet hears gruesome yet darkly humorous stories of family lore while experiencing, for the first time, some love and care. Harper, another parentless girl, soon joins Ratchet. The approaching canning season becomes not only a metaphor for that moment in each life when everything is ripe, but also provides Ratchet with the self-confidence found in working with others and with a means to support herself. Offbeat, slapstick humor is mitigated by poignancy in Horvath's distinctive rollicking style. There is occasional use of strong language, and the family stories are woven with death, often gruesomely described. Parents take a big hit in this novel, leaving Ratchet and readers with the message that one finds happiness and peace in oneself. The Canning Season, like Horvath's Everything on a Waffle (Farrar, 2001), reads like a tall tale with fantastic and realistic elements interwoven. And, as in a tall tale, Ratchet, Tilly, and Penpen become larger than life and unforgettable. Readers are in for a wise and wacky ride when they open this novel.-Connie Tyrrell Burns, Mahoney Middle School, South Portland, ME Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

Horvath tops even Everything on a Waffle (2001) with this hilarious, heartrending tale of two unwanted children left with a pair of eccentric old ladies. As softhearted as her hard-drinking twin sister, Tilly, is surly, Penpen Menuto proclaims a willingness to welcome all who come to the door of their isolated old house--a resolve that is sorely tested by the twin entrances of mousy Ratchet Ratchet Clark, a distant relative, and Harper, a sharp-tongued adolescent raised, then abandoned, by a ne’er-do-well aunt. Subjecting their new charges to wonderfully lurid family stories and conversational volleys that tend to veer violently off-course, the 91-year-old twins both provide care, and need it--a combination that ultimately leads to Ratchet’s blossoming, and to Harper showing the worthy spirit beneath a truly rough-cut exterior. Though Tilly’s old heart finally gives out at the end, the author alleviates the tragedy with an epilogue describing how everyone else turns out (well). Once again Horvath displays a genius for creating multigenerational, interestingly extended families, and for blending high and low comedy into a tale rife with important themes and life-changing events. (Fiction. 11-13)

Product Details

• ISBN: 0374410429
  
• ISBN-13: 9780374410421
• Format: Paperback, 208pp
• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
• Pub. Date: October 2005
• Edition Description: Reprint
• Sales Rank: 68,683
• Age Range: Young Adult

• Table of Contents

Table of Contents