Whirligig
- Author Paul Fleischman
- Narrator Robert Field, Lily Christian, various narrators
- Publisher Blackstone Publishing
- Publish Date 1 October 2011
- Run Time 3 hours and 35 minutes
- Format Audio
- Genre Children’s / Teenage fiction: General fiction, Children’s / Teenage personal and social topics: Death and bereavement, Children’s / Teenage: Personal and social topics.
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Listen to a sample
What to expect
New to town, Brent Bishop longs to stroll around school with the popular Brianna on his arm. But when Brianna begs him at a party full of schoolmates to stop hounding her, Brent’s hopes are shattered. Trying to escape his humiliation, he attempts to destroy himself in a car crash—and ends up killing Lea, an innocent teen unfortunate enough to cross his path. Lea’s mother asks one thing of Brent: that he create four whirligigs from a picture of Lea and set them up at the four corners of the United States. Lea’s mother believes that by spreading the joy that whirligigs gave Lea as a child, Brent will keep Lea’s spirit alive. And so Brent goes off with an unlimited bus ticket and the tools he needs to memorialize Lea. On his journey, he rediscovers his own love of life, and he begins to realize how—like the pieces that form the intricate whirligigs—people come together to affect each other in surprising ways.
Critics Review
u201cComplex and rewarding, this is a stellar addition to a consummate writeru2019s body of work.u201d
u201cThe story as a whole and the inner sense of self that Brent achieves nthrough his experiences are mesmerizing. The language of the whirligig nstories gleams and soars: a metaphor of movement, dance, laughter, and nirrepressible life.u201d
u201cThough Whirligig has linear movement, it impresses readers more nwith its sense of interconnected spiralingu2026There is enormous nvitality and hopefulness expressed in this brief masterwork.u201d
u201cThis is a cathartic story of redemption. Brent, filled with self-doubt,n guilt, and a host of worries, is a character todayu2019s adolescents will nrecognize and agonize with. Fleischmanu2019s writing is filled with nbeautiful imagery, no more so than in the twirling arms of his nwhirligigs that remind readers that sustaining the human spirit in an nimperfect world requires reaching out to others.u201d
u201cIn an intricately structured novel, Fleischman skillfully connects the nstories of several people to the evolution of his main characteru2026Brentu2019s journey is an embracing and an edifying one.u201d
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