Nothing Ever Happens On 90th Street
Grade 2-4?Schotter offers blocked young writers some savvy advice as she gives the premise of Ellen Raskin's Nothing Ever Happens on My Block (Aladdin, 1989) a contemporary flavor?in more ways than one. Sitting on her stoop with a Danish and a notebook as blank as her mind, Eva searches for inspiration as passing residents share words of wisdom: watch carefully, don't neglect details, use words in new ways ("Try to find the poetry in your pudding"), stretch the truth if necessary, make something happen. Taking the last to heart, Eva crumbles up her pastry to attract a flock of pigeons, setting off a chain of small accidents, chance meetings, and conversations, all of which she happily records. By the end, good things have come to everyone: an actor "on hiatus" lands a job offer, romance blooms between a pizza man and a lonely dancer, and the addition of some spilled coffee changes a vendor's bland chocolate mousse into mocha so magnificent that he is inspired to open a cafe with two new friends. Brooker incorporates pieces of newspaper, scraps of patterned cloth, and small objects into her paintings of a thoroughly lived-in urban neighborhood. Against backgrounds that have the intimacy and flattened perspective of a small stage, she poses her characters in appropriately theatrical stances; their wide gestures and exaggerated expressions suit this lively, fluently told tale perfectly.?John Peters, New York Public LibraryCopyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.