A determined 12-year-old girl bikes across the country in this quirky and charming debut middle grade novel.
Introverted Bicycle has lived most of her life at the Mostly Silent Monastery in Washington, D.C. When her guardian, Sister Wanda, announces that Bicycle is going to attend a camp where she will learn to make friends, Bicycle says no way and sets off on her bike for San Francisco to meet her idol, a famous cyclist, certain he will be her first true friend. Who knew that a ghost would haunt her handlebars and that she would have to contend with bike-hating dogs, a bike-loving horse, bike-crushing pigs, and a mysterious lady dressed in black. Over the uphills and downhills of her journey, Bicycle discovers that friends are not such a bad thing to have after all, and that a dozen cookies really can solve most problems.--from the publisher
320 pages 978-0823440078 Ages 8-12
Sequel: A Few Bicycles More In the sequel to the popular Adventures of a Girl Called Bicycle, our hero reunites with her long-lost family and attempts a daring vehicular rescue.
A Few Bicycles More is the exciting sequel to Christina Uss’s Adventures of a Girl Called Bicycle. Bicycle has been back from her cross-country adventure with her robot-like bike, named Fortune, for just a month when it starts malfunctioning, insisting that they pedal away from their home in Washington D.C. to Harpers Ferry in West Virginia. Once there, they discover a scrapyard where bicycles are being crushed and recycled—and it appears they are too late to save them.
Bicycle and Fortune head to a convenience store so Bicycle can drown her sorrows with a chocolate bar. Much to her astonishment, she meets her long-lost family there. Bicycle learns that they have been looking for her since she disappeared as a toddler and that she is a quintuplet. She is happy to go live with them except for one thing: her family doesn’t share her passion for cycling. In fact, her sisters have never even ridden a bike.
Then Fortune acts up again, leading Bicycle back to the scrapyard where she discovers that there are four bicycles left and they were all made by the same inventor who created her Fortune. Four seems too coincidental to ignore--the perfect number to bring her sisters up to speed. She sets a plan in motion to rescue the bikes, a plan that if it works will help her fit into her family and still stay true to cycling self.---from the publisher
272 pages 978-0823455904 Ages 8-12
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I really wanted another bicycle adventure like Bradbury's Shift, and love the cover on this. It is, however, a fantasy book. Clutch, the bicycle, is sort of inhabited by a ghost. It also had a lot of very quirky characters and events. These don't do as well with my students, so perhaps this book would be more successful in an elementary school. I wish more students rode bikes-- they give children so much freedom, and it's good to see Bicycle enjoying this. The biking route is well explained and would be fun, if challenging, to do.
Recommended by: Karen Yingling, Library Media Specialist, Ohio USA
See more of her reviews: msyinglingreads.blogspot.com
