The Several Lives of Orphan Jack - Hardcover

*Starred Review* Gr. 3-6. Jack lives at the Opportunities School for Orphans, where his most cherished possession is a battered dictionary, with the B section missing. When he learns that he will be apprenticed to a firm of bookkeepers, he's ecstatic; he thinks he'll be protecting books. But when the job turns out to be adding numbers ("sums, sameness, and scorn is the life of a Ledger lad"), he takes off, making a detour at a fair, where everything changes after he spontaneously tells a woman that he sells "whims." Soon the somber townsfolk are not only paying for Jack's whims (by gluing little pieces of metal to the soles of your shoes, you can makes music when you dance) but also his concepts, plans, opinions, notions, and fancies. Ellis has created a small gem here, with messages about following your heart tucked into the sentences, phrases, thoughts, and ideas that she seamlessly weaves together. By ingeniously ending each chapter with Jack's dictionary words describing each new circumstance ("boldness and bundles . . . that's the life of an ex-bookkeeper"), she threads a ribbon through the book that sews together both the joy of language and the vicissitudes of a life of possibilities. St-Aubin's ink-and-wash pictures are not always up to the text, but his jaunty cover art will draw in readers. Ilene Cooper
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Grade 3-6-Otherjack is an orphan, so named because another resident at the Opportunities School for Orphans and Foundlings has already claimed the moniker. The boy had 12 years of avoiding floggings and had "melted away from trouble." When Otherjack's "opportunity" arises, he leaves school for the real world, in which many adventures await. The lad, who carries around a battered dictionary and whose passion is language, becomes a bookkeeper's apprentice ("Scholars and scoundrels. Volumes and villains. That will be my life," he thinks). Unhappy, he leaves, and after a series of adventures and misadventures, his true calling becomes clear: he is an "ideas peddler," selling whims, hunches, promises, and intuitions. Finally, he has found success at doing what he does best, and prepares for a life on the road. While the story is slight, there is real strength in Ellis's turns of phrase ("She was so full of herself that she hadn't no room for one more thought"), use of imagery, and alliteration, and in showing readers the power of words and ideas to liberate the imagination.
Sharon Korbeck, Waupaca Area Public Library, WI
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