Best Enemies - Softcover

Kathleen Leverich

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0749710462 ISBN 13: 9780749710460

Publisher: Mammoth, 1992

Synopsis

After Felicity trades her nasty tricks for friendship, Priscilla decides she'd rather have Felicity as an enemy.

About this title

About the Author:

Kathleen Leverich lives in Sommerville, Massachusettes and in Maine.

In Her Own Words...

"Writing began for me as civil war. In 1953 at age five I penciled my first work: "K-a-t-h-y L." These painstakingly printed letters on a white index card earned me borrower's privileges at the Old Greenwich, Connecticut, Perot Memorial Library. With those privileges I planned to trounce my two-and-a-half-years-older sister (a world-class reluctant reader), just once, in something.

"That was my motivation. As an unexpected bonus I found I loved to read. Our house had a wraparound porch, a front stairway and a back, two fireplaces--one standard-sized, one straight from the Hall of the Mountain King. It perched atop the mightiest sledding hill in all of Riverside/Old Greenwich. In peak periods its shingled sprawl contained five of us kids plus Boots the cat, Shan the dog, two parakeets, two Siamese fighting fish--oops!--make that one, plus Mom and Dad.

"I read Grimm's Fairy Tales, Greek myths, Norse legends, and Nancy Drew. I discovered that printing those painstaking marks on paper was not only useful in the Sibling Wars, it was fun. Before I knew it, I was writing stories for school. At first the hope of a good mark served as a carrot. Then I made a discovery. I put pencil to paper, and connections I had never consciously made flowed from graphite onto yellow lined paper. I was astonished.

"At about this time I must have voiced my desire for some straw to spin into gold. My mother's announcement that gold-spinning--and every other form of magical transformation-was "just a story" rocked me to my soles.

"Not long after, Mr. Ives the Sunday School teacher "leveled" with my classmates and me. Behind every miracle lay a grounded-in-science explanation. Aberrant tides had caused the Red Sea to part. Cana's wedding guests had imagined water tasted like wine. This was scandalous news. As I trudged up our steep driveway that day, I thought, Next someone will claim parrots can't talk.

"They mimic," said fifth-grade-teacher Miss Holmes the following Friday. She had paused in her read-aloud of Enid Blyton's Mystery Island to explain. "Yes, the parrot character can speak. But does he understand? No."

"This was the final straw. I made up my mind to show Miss Holmes-Mr. Ives--Mom--everyone, they were dead wrong. Following stints as a University of Southern California film student, a credit checker at a disreputable L. A. loan firm, a Lincoln Center tour guide, a slacker in Almunecar, Spain, as an editor at Cricket magazine, and as Addison-Wesley's children's books editor, that is what I set pencil to paper to do.

"In each book I attempt the same thing: to spin everyday events into the larger-than-life reality I can't prove but know is there. Serious story or comic, that's my aim. I get support in this endeavor from my larger-than-life husband, Walter Lorraine, and hints of a higher consciousness from Nikka, our great-hearted dog.

"I do my writing in the tiny office of our tall house on a teeming street in Greater Metropolitan Boston. And in an equally tiny office in our bright and airy house on a quiet point in Downeast Maine. My gracious older sister swears she reads every word."

From School Library Journal:

Grade 1-4-- First-grader Priscilla Robin must deal with Felicity Doll, a brash classmate who by the end of the first week has tricked Priscilla out of her desk, pencil case, lunchbox, and self-respect. As the year wears on so do the inflicted indignities, but with some help from a school-wise older sister, Priscilla survives. In the end Priscilla concludes that although she and Felicity are never destined for friendship, perhaps they can be best enemies. The plot's premise is initially inviting, but the book is marred by stylistic and structural weaknesses. The ages of the characters would indicate that the book is intended for novice readers, yet its overall length, length of chapters (over ten pages), print size, and vocabulary are more appropriate for third or fourth graders. Stylistically, the endless succession of short subject-predicate sentences, especially at the start, stilt the story's flow. The children's dialogue doesn't ring true--they answer "Very well" to questions or announce "I must leave." Most puzzling is why Priscilla would encourage any relationship, even a hostile one, with the thoroughly unlikable Felicity, who rebuffs her every attempt at peacemaking. There is also no revelation scene in which Priscilla finds out possible reasons for Felicity's rude behavior. Lamb's illustrations are an appealing blend of sarcasm and whimsy, but otherwise Best Enemies, with its conflict between reading level and interest level, may be left without an audience.
- Joanne Aswell, Long Valley Middle School, N.Y.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Mammoth
• Publication date: 1992
• ISBN 10: 0749710462
• ISBN 13: 9780749710460
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 96
• Illustrator: Chris Riddell