Whirligig

From the Publisher

“Complex and rewarding, this is a stellar addition to a consummate writer’s body of work.”—Publishers Weekly, Starred Review
“This is a cathartic story of redemption. Brent, filled with self-doubt, guilt, and a host of worries, is a character today's adolescents will recognize and agonize with. Fleischman's writing is filled with beautiful imagery, no more so than in the twirling arms of his whirligigs that remind readers that sustaining the human spirit in an imperfect world requires reaching out to others.”—Voice of Youth Advocates
“Though Whirligig has linear movement, it impresses readers more with its sense of interconnected spiraling. . . . There is enormous vitality and hopefulness expressed in this brief masterwork.”—School Library Journal
“In an intricately structured novel, Fleischman skillfully connects the stories of several people to the evolution of his main character. . . . Brent’s journey is an embracing and an edifying one.”—The Horn Book
“The story as a whole and the inner sense of self that Brent achieves through his experiences are mesmerizing. The language of the whirligig stories gleams and soars: a metaphor of movement, dance, laughter, and irrepressible life.”—Booklist

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

After a drunk teenage boy kills a girl while driving, his life is transformed by fulfilling a request of the girl's mother. PW's boxed review called Fleischman's novel "stellar." Ages 12-up. (Nov.) Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.

Children's Literature - Sharon Salluzzo

When newcomer Brent realizes that he is a misfit at the party, his drunken anger gets the best of him. While driving toward home he hears a voice in his head telling him to end his life. Brent survives the wreck but kills a high school senior honor student, Lea Zamora. Brent meets Lea's mother and agrees to her peculiar request: to go to the four corners of the United States and build whirligigs "of a girl that looks like Lea". Traveling alone by bus, Brent learns to atone for his actions, and through his creations affects the lives of others in ways he will never know. This is a beautiful story of atonement, self-respect, learning to live with the consequences of one's actions, and discovering that what we do can have a profound influence on others. Fleischman skillfully intertwines the plot threads into one finely crafted novel.

Children's Literature - Susie Wilde

Newly moved and angry Brent attends a party. It turns out he is dressed wrong and not clued into the planned activity. His fury escalates when he drinks, is rejected by a girl, teased and comes to blows with the host. Enraged and humiliated, Brent leaves and becomes lost in a maze of expressways. He decides suicide is the way out of all his problems. Only he doesn't kill himself but Lea, an eighteen-year old caring, honor student. Her parents ask Brent to create four whirligigs resembling Lea and place them in four corners of the United States. The sorrowful Brent, armed with a used instruction book, supplies and a bus pass, establishes handmade whirligigs in Maine, Florida, Washington and San Diego. Each has a positive effect on another person, but no one is changed more than Brent who sees life like a whirligig, "its myriad parts invisibly linked, the hidden crankshafts and connecting rods carrying motion across the globe and over the centuries." He understands also how Lea's death has saved him from blackness and set his life in motion, a "motion that he was now transferring to others." This has much to say about apologies, and discovering that saying "I'm sorry" is as important to the offending party as the injured.

VOYA - Maura Bresnahan

As he nears his seventeenth birthday, Brent decides he is so tired of trying to fit in in a world where he does not belong that his only option is suicide. Driving home alone from a high school party, he plans to end his life while behind the wheel. A life is taken, but not Brent's. His reckless actions kill eighteen-year-old Lea Zamora, a soon-to-be college freshman, loving daughter, and talented musician with a beautiful smile and a love for life. Sentenced to probation and community service, Brent meets Lea's mother as part of his restitution. When Mrs. Zamora requests Brent build and place whirligigs in the four corners of the United States as a way of spreading Lea's happiness, he readily agrees. Brent believes his summer journey cross-country by bus will be an escape from the guilt he carries; from his parents who do not understand him; and from a life that holds little meaning. As he travels and builds his memorials to Lea, Brent slowly accepts that while he cannot bring Lea back, her spirit lives on in the whirligigs. He learns to appreciate the stars in the night sky, develops the discipline required to learn a musical instrument, and finds a place for himself in a world of his choosing, not his parents'. Brent's whirligigs enrich the lives of four diverse people whose stories Fleischman tells in chapters that are interspersed with Brent's (less sophisticated readers might have trouble adjusting to the transitions). A young girl in Maine who is immersed in studying science; a Korean-American boy in suburban Seattle who dreams of playing baseball while his adoptive mother dreams he will be a concert violinist; a Puerto Rican-born street sweeper in Miami; and a teenager in San Diego coping with her grandmother's mortality all experience epiphanies connected to Lea's whirligigs. Through the diversity of these people who never meet Brent but are somehow forever changed by his work, Fleischman proves his point: "the world itself was a whirligig, its myriad parts invisibly linked." At this revelation, Brent's spiritual journey ends and begins again. He accepts that his life and Lea's intersected for a reason and appreciates that her death means he must now live a fuller, more meaningful one in her memory. This is a cathartic story of redemption. Brent, filled with self-doubt, guilt, and a host of worries, is a character today's adolescents will recognize and agonize with. Fleischman's writing is filled with beautiful imagery, no more so than in the twirling arms of his whirligigs that remind readers that sustaining the human spirit in an imperfect world requires reaching out to others. VOYA Codes: 5Q 4P M J S (Hard to imagine it being better written, Broad general YA appeal, Middle School-defined as grades 6 to 8, Junior High-defined as grades 7 to 9 and Senior High-defined as grades 10 to 12).

School Library Journal

Vapid, self-absorbed, status-conscious Brent attends a party at which he suffers a very public rejection by the girl he's been lusting after. Drunk, furious, and unable to deal with his humiliation, he tries to kill himself on the trip home, but his reckless driving kills a stranger instead: a lovely, talented, motivated, high school senior. Though Brent's parents would like to minimize his sense of guilt and his punishment, Brent himself is tormented and longs to make some restitution. The court arranges a meeting with his victim's mother, who asks Brent to "make four whirligigs, of a girl that looks like Lea....Then set them up in Washington, California, Florida, and Maine, the corners of the United States." The brilliant Fleischman has written a beautifully layered, marvelously constructed novel that spins and circles in numerous directions. Readers follow the creation of each whirligig and its impact on one or more observer: a young violinist, a Holocaust survivor, a Puerto Rican street-sweeper. They also follow Brent's journey by bus to the corners of the country and of his journey within himself to find a balance between recrimination and reconciliation. Though Whirligig has linear movement, it impresses readers more with its sense of interconnected spiraling. Brent's skill and inventiveness grow with each whirligig. The emotional responses of those who see his creations likewise vary: some find joy, some peace, some equilibrium. There is enormous vitality and hopefulness expressed in this brief masterwork. Miriam Lang Budin, Mt. Kisco Public Library, NY

School Library Journal

Gr 7-11-Newbery Medal-winner Paul Fleischman's story connectedness-to oneself, to others, and to nature. It is the story of a 16 year old's journey of self-discovery. Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.

Horn Book Magazine

In an intricately structured novel, Fleischman skillfully connects the stories of several people to the evolution of his main character. Brent, a self-centered adolescent, drives away from a party after being humiliated in front of his classmates and tries to commit suicide by closing his eyes and letting go of the steering wheel. Instead, he kills the driver of another car, a seventeen-year-old girl. His well-to-do parents can afford to hire psychologists and lawyers to avoid the worst of the consequences for him, but Brent feels a desperate need to atone for what he did. When the victim's mother asks that he build four whirligigs and set them up in the four corners of the United States as monuments to her daughter, Brent sees this as his chance to do penance and agrees to go. The resulting odyssey is a unique coming-of-age story as he is forced to depend on his own resources, is challenged through chance encounters with strangers, and struggles to build the whirligigs that become increasingly more complex as he develops his skills. Meanwhile, in a reverse chronology and in alternating chapters, the reader learns of the effects his whirligigs have had on individuals whose paths they cross. A young Puerto Rican father, escaping his noisy and crowded home in Miami, comes upon a little wooden marching band playing in unison and is reminded that people in a group can make good music or bad. In Weeksboro, Maine, an elaborate wind toy brings about a meeting between a girl and the boy of her dreams. It's the ordinariness of the situations that makes the point stick: small deeds, like split-moment decisions, can have powerful and unforeseen consequences; a single action can reverberate endlessly. As though it were a whirligig turning in the wind, the theme is spun out endlessly, and perhaps more than necessary. But Brent's journey is an embracing and an edifying one. Unlikable at first, he grows on the reader as he himself grows. Just before he returns home, he takes out Two Years before the Mast, a book he'd been given at the beginning of his trip, and places it on a book exchange shelf, "aware he was nudging an invisible gear forward." He is by now fully mindful of the consequences of small actions.

Kirkus Reviews

At once serious and playful, this tale of a teenager's penitential journey to four corners of the country can be read on several levels. While attempting to kill himself on the highway after a humiliating social failure, Brent causes a fatal accident for another motorist, Lea Zamora. His sentence requires a personal act of atonement, if the victim's family so desires; Lea's mother hands him a bus pass and tells him to place pictorial whirligigs in Maine, Florida, Washington, and California as monuments to her daughter's ability to make people smile. Brent sets out willingly, armed with plywood, new tools, and an old construction manual. Characteristically of Fleischman (Seedfolks, 1997, etc.), the narrative structure is unconventional: Among the chapters in which Brent constructs and places the contraptions are independent short stories that feature the whirligigs, playing significant roles in the lives of others. Brent encounters a variety of travelers and new thoughts on the road, and by the end has lost much of the sense of isolation that made his earlier aspirations to be one of the in-crowd so important. The economy of language and sustained intensity of feeling are as strongly reminiscent of Cynthia Rylant's Missing May (1992) as are the wind toys and, at least in part, the theme, but Fleischman's cast and mood are more varied, sometimes even comic, and it's Brent's long physical journey, paralleled by his inner one, that teaches him to look at the world and himself with new eyes.