FISCAL PEAR AND SHIMMER IN THE CALL OF RIVER WHALE

FISCAL PEAR AND SHIMMER IN THE CALL OF RIVER WHALE
Author: Olvia Brooks-Scrivanich
Copyright 2008
BookSurge Publishing
Paperback $14.99
ISBN 978-1-4196-9589-6
96 pages

A book with a talking and walking pear and a best friend being a lightening bug are the basis for the children’s book, FISCAL PEAR AND SHIMMER IN THE CALL OF RIVER WHALE. Shimmer, the lightening bug and Fiscal, the pear, meet every year in continuing their friendship with a new adventure. This time though, it is an adventure involving their lives.

The evil Bakery of Pears enlists help from Cutter, a butcher knife, and Butt Rott Root, obviously rot, to capture Fiscal who they want to use to attract others to their bakery. Since almost every fruit has their own bakery, the Bakery of Pears has been losing business to the others. She knows that if she can have captured in her business a walking and talking pear, her business will be the most successful one.

So the adventure begins with Fiscal and Shimmer desperately hiding and seeking shelter away from Cutter and Butt Rott. With the help of their friends, Olie Owl, Flitter and Flutter who are butterflies, River Whale, SOL who is a streak of sunlight, Tappy who is a tree with a tap root, and others, this adventure is a combination of THE WIZARD OF OZ meeting ALICE IN WONDERLAND.

I am concerned about who the audience is expected to be for this book. The storyline is geared for preschool through ages seven, but the vocabulary and the sentence length is definitely for students in the preteen years. Also, at one place is language that I personally, as a teacher of fifth-grade students, do not allow in my classroom.

FISCAL AND SHIMMER IN THE CALL OF RIVER WHALE is definitely a fantasy emphasizing the value of loyalty in friendship.

Olivia Brooks-Scrivanich was born in Ohio and lived much of her childhood as a gifted musician. She currently lives in Washington.