TRAVELING WITH OMA

by Ilse Kleberger ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 20, 1970

Oma is of course Grandmother Oma (1967) though you wouldn't know it from book or jacket and, regrettably, neither will children who would find them very like if not entirely alike, this making Oma less of a character and more of a personage. Common-sensically, she treats the burglar caught coming in the kitchen window like the unfortunate he is but persists in calling him the burglar, which he is also. Until he confides to Oma and the Pieselang children, Jan, Bridget and Peter, that he's Mario the magician, unsuccessful since wife Marietta left for the circus. His gypsy caravan is the children's hideaway and then, when he's hospitalized (from injuries sustained climbing in that window), the Pieselangs' magic carpet; taking a vote at each crossroads, the four jaunt through Germany, stopping to examine an ant skyscraper, visit a castle (where Peter's two pet mice multiply in the Hall of Mirrors), stay in a tent camp (and shelter the soaked campers). . . and separately assay ""The Art of Cooking"" (Peter's three-course meal is three flavors of ice cream). Then there's a stint of toy-making, ""The Result of Playing a Prank,"" and a providential meeting with Marietta that reunites the two troupers. All very genial and jolly except for Oma's imagined ""little Negro boy"" baked in a surprise dish with chicken legs--not for eating, she quickly explains, but somewhat less than palatable nonetheless.

Pub Date: March 20, 1970

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Atheneum

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1970

Categories: FICTION