About My One-Hundred Adventures
Adventures.
Jane is twelve years old, and she is ready for them. She yearns to move beyond the world of her younger siblings and single mother and their cozy house by the sea, and to step into the "know-not-what"—the place where your heart buzzes with excitement and things happen.
And over the summer, whether she looks for them or not, adventures keep finding Jane. There's the thrilling solo ride in a hijacked hot-air balloon; the out-of-the-blue appearances of a slew of possible fathers; a weird new friendship with Nellie Phipps, preacher and wannabe psychic; the accidental crime Jane may have committed involving a Bible and a baby named Gourd; and, finally, her discovery of the truth that lies at the heart of all great adventures: that it's not what matters to you that matters, but what you learn about yourself.
National Book Award and Newberry Honor winner Polly Horvath has written her richest, most spirited book yet, filled with characters that reader will never forget.
Look for My One Hundred Adventures, coming in September 2008.
Reviews
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"Sometimes Jane's duped, sometimes she's played; but if hope fades, it returns, and adventure still beckons. Unconventionality is Horvath’s stock and trade, but here the high quirkiness quotient rests easily against Jane’s inner story with its honest, childlike core." Booklist (starred review)
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"Jane’s poetic, philosophical musings capture a child’s logic with an adult voice in this witty, wise and wonderful novel. " Kirkus (starred review).
from My One Hundred Adventures:
You can hear the waves crash more loudly when it is dark. You can smell the sharper smells of the sea. Maybe the wind will take us this time, I think, as a gust shakes the foundations of the house. Maybe we will be blown apart to the many corners of the earth, but then I feel a sharp stab of something, excitement maybe. It is the prospect of adventures to be had.