Shelly's Book Blog

My One Hundred Adventures, by Polly Horvath, is another of those on School Library Journal's Best Books 2008 list. 12-year-old Jane tells the story of her summer adventures, which include meeting several of her mother's old boyfriends, delivering Bibles with her eccentric pastor, and babysitting the Gourd children. Jane and her family live at the beach and often eat off the land -- fishing and gathering muscles from the ocean and gathering wild berries that grow near their home. It seems as though Jane would lead a peaceful life, but her neighbors have other plans for her, at least for this summer. My favorite scene is where Nellie, the pastor with whom Jane devilers Bibles, steals a hot air balloon and sends Jane off in it by herself, instructing her to drop the Bibles out of the balloon as she travels. Another funny scene is where Mrs. Parks, who is convinced she is very ill with thrombisis, becomes huffy because the local doctor decided to put another woman in the hospital instead of her. This is a touching story of a girl coming of age, and I enjoyed it very much.