The Happy Yellow Car

By Polly Horvath

Book Overview

A "wacky comedy set in dusty, small-town Missouri...Elected Pork-Fry Queen by her classmates, Betty must come up with a dollar for flowers or lose out to the teacher's pet. The task would be easier had her father not discovered Betty's college fund, which he has spent on a spiffy yellow car...Sheer delight...The cornball characters and the slapstick family dynamics snare readers on the very first page and keep 'em chuckling till the end."-Booklist

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0374328455
• ISBN13: 9780374328450
• Release Date: September 1994
• Publisher: Farrar Straus Giroux
• Length: 151 Pages
• Weight: 0.75 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.6" x 8.3"
• Age Range: 9 to 12 years
• Grade Range: Grades 4 to 7

Customer Reviews

Total Fun

This is one of the funnest books I've ever read. It is surprisingly different. Horvath makes fun of religion, would-be intellectuals, kids with dreams, even bed-ridden Uncle Treacle who is hauled around bed and all in the back of a pickup. The people in this book are always on the look-out for ways to cheat each other to fulfill their own dreams. The main character, Betty, is remarkably self-centered (so conceited she reminded me of myself). Underneath all the nastiness, which is tempered with a biting wit, these people are kindly. The characters all have their dreams and in the end all their dreams are validated--Gretel's even comes true. A very upbeat book though it's easy to see that trouble lies ahead. The characters are frightening real and lovable in spite of--maybe because of--their flaws.

"Dangled from Her Tongue Like a Spider from a Filament." *

Uncanny--I independently came to the same reminiscence as the writer of the BOOKLIST review. Here is what characterizes THE HAPPY YELLOW CAR: raucous slapstick reminiscent of Wallace Beery and Marjorie Main (Ma and Pa Kettle). But it is also so much more. Polly Horvath's wordsmithery glows with a warmth that is precisely and charmingly choreographed much like an Astaire and Rogers routine. What adverbs! What picturesque description! In this "fractured" fairy tale, the wacky Grunt family in depression era, rural Missouri provides a touching opportunity to reflect on the vitality of goalsetting as well as to be thankful for the occasions when you can encounter the Aunt Lollys of the world in print versus in person! Polly Horvath is so much fun! I'm working my way back to her earlier books while I await the release this year (2005) of a book to be entitled, THE VACATION! * The simile is Polly Horvath's and occurs in chapter 5 of THE HAPPY YELLOW CAR.