Ensemble! The Applewhites at Wit's End by Stephanie Tolan

It was a dark and stormy night when Rudolph Applewhite arrived home from New York to announce the end of the world.

It's not an approaching Apocalypse that the hyperbolic head of the kooky Applewhite household and noted theatre director announces. It's the iconic financial cliff, caused by a dastardly embezzlement of investment funds, that threatens the foreclosure of their creative enclave and homeschooling operation based in a former off-the-beaten path motor lodge now appropriately christened "Wit's End." Although the clan's various artistic endeavors are marginally profitable, the ongoing payments of their mortgage are in jeopardy unless the Applewhites can gen up a generous infusion of cash before autumn.

The various adult artists--mystery writer, furniture and wood sculpture stylists, assorted dancers, poets, photographers, and the four talented Applewhite children--brainstorm a solution--a creative summer camp named Eureka! for gifted children. The burden of organization falls largely on thirteen-year-old E.D., the "non-creative" Applewhite and the only one with managerial skills, who soon creates spreadsheets, data bases, and schedules for the "counselors," all members of the eccentric clan except foster kid, Jake Semple, city bad boy kicked out of every school system in Rhode Island and now a promising musical comedy star.

Only six kids finally show up on Eureka's opening day, all self-centered kids between eleven and fourteen, all obviously gifted in albeit strange ways and all pampered by their own self-absorbed but wealthy parents. There are the identical twins, talented whiner Cinnamon and cheery poet Ginger, who only wear blue and green, David, a singer whose Botticelli-angel good looks cause the sensible E.D. to be instantly smitten, "Q," a likewise talented singer and dancer who becomes David's instant rival, Harley, son of uber-tattooed punk-rock star parents, whose only interest seems to be photographing dead stuff, and Samantha, a talented, uh, reader with no interest in anything.

With only six clients, the Applewhites pinch their pennies and being creative, improvise materials with the help of E.D.'s detailed workshop schedules, hoping to scrape through the summer with enough money to save their homestead. Unfortunhately, the campers, all free spirits themselves, revolt against E.D.'s rigid rounds of compulsory seminars. The Applewhites are forced to ditch the well-rounded workshop format and punt--winging it with an ensemble effort that gradually creates a dynamic esprit de corps among the diverse campers as well.

And it is a good thing they succeed, because Rudolph begins to receive poison pen letters threatening to report the many supposed violations of state regulations for summer camps to the authorities. And when a dark-suited, clipboard-toting "official" is spotted, lurking in the woods and taking notes and samples of their somewhat rustic and mucky-bottomed pond in use as camp swimming pool, the Applewhites swing into joint defensive action, provided with a uniquely creative plan devised by Jake and E.D. and starring all the campers who are now in cahoots to keep the camp open. Even their portly Bassett hound Winston and bellicose billy goat Wolfbane get in on the act as the family comes up with their most creative and dramatic ensemble improvisation yet.

Stephanie Tolan's sequel to her Newbery-winning Surviving the Applewhites, the delightful Applewhites at Wit's End (HarperCollins, 2012) again focuses on Jake, he of the piercings and iconic Mohawk, and the sensible E.D., she of the spreadsheets and logical mind, who again prove their value to their quirky nuclear family (and begin a promising romantic attraction) as main characters. Not since Helen Cresswell's The Bagthorpes saga has such a eccentricly creative family won similar kudos from reviewers and a following from middle readers. Let's hope that Tolan comes up with more ensemble performances from the bizarre but lovably diverse Applewhites.

“Tolan has pulled off something special here.” says Booklist in a coveted starred review.

Heading Home: Carolina Harmony by Marilyn Taylor McDowell

Carolina reached up and felt the wood carving she wore as a pendant. She rubbed her finger over its wings and its tail, feeling where he daddy had made the cuts and where he'd sanded it smooth.

"It's a present for you, Carolina.
It's a catbird, case you couldn't tell."

She remembered that clear June night, when they were camping up near Grandfather Mountain.

"Lift your hair so I can tie a knot in the cord."

She remembered leaning into the crook of his shoulder and gazing into the night sky with the campfire crackling and blazing before them.

Fans of Anne of Green Gables, that classic tale of a red-headed, pigtailed orphan girl which celebrated its centennial last year, have a new novel of an extraordinary red-haired orphan to enjoy, in Marylyn Taylor McDowell's recent Carolina Harmony (Delacorte, 2009).

When Carolina Campbell's parents and baby brother Caleb are suddenly killed in a car accident, she moves in with her dad's foster mother, "Auntie Shen," (so called after her baby pronunciation of the Gaelic seanmhair for grandmother.) It's 1964, but life in the high mountains of western North Carolina is still primitive for that time. Auntie Shen supports them with cash from her her wild berry jams and jellies and her paintings of mountain plants and animals sold at her Morning Glory Jelly Stand. Although memories and dreams of her lost family haunt Carolina, Auntie Shen's stories of her father's boyhood and frequent "I just love ya, girl!" give her a feeling of continuity and security.

But when Auntie Shen has a stroke and is moved to a nursing home, Carolina learns what being an orphan really means. Taken away from the care of Auntie Shen's Black friend Ruby to "be with people of your own kind," Carolina is sent first to an unkind and autocratic minister's family. When Carolina runs away, she is found and moved to Boone to stay with Miss Lily Jean, a woman motivated mostly by the money she gets for fostering children. Athough befriended by Lily Jean's mischievous nephew, Russell, Carolina is frightened by her trucker husband and once more flees to the woods, finally making her way to Harmony Farm, where she is quietly taken in by Ray and Latah and their son Luke. A wonderful summer passes in which Carolina feels that she has found a family who will keep her and love her for all time.

But when Russell turns up with his Uncle Sims, come to shear the sheep at Harmony Farm, he tries to convince Carolina that Ray and Latah only keep her for her work on the farm. When Sims carelessly sets the barn on fire, Carolina is afraid that she will be blamed and, fearing that she has lost her family all over again, stows away with Russell aboard a freight train heading for Tennessee.

Strong and unique characters, a strong sense of time and place, and plenty of orphan-style adventure make this novel both a sensitive and suspenseful story. Carolina is more than lucky in her many rescuers, from the grandmotherly Ruby to the soft-hearted Knoxville beauty school student Georgia, who sweet-talks her sheriff's deputy boyfriend into giving Carolina a second chance at Harmony Farm. A bit of an old-fashioned tale of a 1960s "Annie," Carolina Harmony is an engaging story of a resourceful orphan who finally comes home to stay.