Worlds Apart: Fernie and Me - Hardcover

Soto, Gary

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 039924218X ISBN 13: 9780399242182

Publisher: Putnam Juvenile, 2005

Synopsis

We met these spirited best friends in Fearless Fernie, and now they're taking on the world! From boxing a kangaroo in Australia to craving Mexican food in Taiwan, or riding a runaway camel in Egypt and eating cheese as holey and smelly as their socks in Switzerland, the globe is their imaginary playground.
Gary Soto's accessible and humorous poems will elicit nods of recognition and bursts of laughter as readers enjoy this outrageous jaunt around the world.
Praise for Fearless Fernie: Hanging Out With Fernie and Me

About this title

From School Library Journal:

Grade 4-7–Fernie and his best friend [from Fearless Fernie: Hanging Out with Fernie and Me (Putnam, 2002)] are off on an imaginary trip around the world. The conversational style of the free verse exhibits the same humor and insight that will engage readers, though the premise of this collection doesn't work quite as well as its predecessor. The opening poem, "Itching to Travel," sets the boys on their journey: "We itched to go places,/To double-tie our shoes and roll away on skateboards./And why? We knew only our back and front yards,/School and the playground...So one morning/Fergie and me jumped off the roof of the doghouse/And started up the street, our shadows struggling to keep up." They imagine themselves from San Francisco to Hawaii, hitting countries on every continent until they wind up back home. Their experiences are as silly and stereotypical as one would expect from these characters, oddly defeating the purpose of the travelogue–from tattoos in the Philippines to safari in Kenya, from a camel encounter in Aswan to kilts in Scotland. It's funny, but not, in the end, very interesting, and strays from the wonderful realism that connected readers in the first title. Oh well–kids who enjoyed the first one will appreciate being reunited with the characters.–Nina Lindsay, Oakland Public Library, CA

From Booklist:

Gr. 4-6. The two middle-school best friends who appeared in Fearless Fernie (2001) are together again, but this time they leave behind their backyards and their school and take off to tour the world. Whether the boys are on safari in Kenya, on the beach in Hawaii, sharing a salami sausage snack in Sicily, or craving Mexican food in Taiwan, the simple, mischievous poems and black-and-white cartoonlike art show that the imaginary global adventures are never really far from home. It's the friendship story, both silly and affectionate, that is the real subject. The most moving poem, "The Road Not Taken . . . in Peru," a takeoff on Robert Frost's classic, finds the friends choosing separate paths, then retracing steps ("He went down mine, me his") to find themselves wiser for traveling both roads. Hazel Rochman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

About this edition

• Publisher: Putnam Juvenile
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 039924218X
• ISBN 13: 9780399242182
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 64
• Illustrator: Clarke Greg