Yet ANOTHER first novel!  (I’m going to have to create a category!)  A Crooked Kind of Perfect by Linda Urban is straight up good writing.  An excellent realistic fiction middler novel, at 211 small-sized pages it is not overwhelming.  Chapters are often only a page or two long, so the pace is fast.  Chapter titles such as “What’s Weird” followed by “What’s Really Weird” are kid-friendly.  The story is uncomplicated and humorous and POSITIVE! 

Urban is gifted at creating flawed characters for which the reader cannot help but be sympathetic.  The mathematical work-a-holic mother is often absent, but shows up when it counts.  The father is in charge of “domestic affairs”, has overwhelming apprehension when leaving the house, and seems to have “sucker” written in invisible ink on his forehead.  (The invisible ink is clearly seen by zealous salespeople!)  And Wheeler Diggs keeps following her home.

The narrator, eleven-year-old Zoe Ellis, has a dream to be a concert pianist (like Horowitz) and someday play Carnegie Hall.  But when her dad is suckered into buying an organ instead of a piano, her la-dee-da dreams instead go boompa-chucka, boompa-chucka on the Perfectone D-60.  But Zoe continually makes the best of things and ends up entered in the Perform-O-Rama.  But even this opportunity is complicated by her parents and their quirks…and Wheeler Diggs.

I think President Barack Obama would like Zoe.  She exemplifies the challenge he issued in his Jan. 20, 2009 Inaugural address. 

“What is required of us now is a new era of responsibility — a recognition, on the part of every American, that we have duties to ourselves, our nation, and the world, duties that we do not grudgingly accept but rather seize gladly, firm in the knowledge that there is nothing so satisfying to the spirit, so defining of our character, than giving our all to a difficult task.” 

Indeed it is Zoe’s optimistic, can-do attitude – her “all to a difficult task” - coupled with her quirky and humorous outlook that made the book enjoyable for this reader.  Zoe is a character with character – I shall happily recommend this to my students.  No book is perfect, but this is A Crooked Kind of Perfect!