ERNIE AND THE MILE-LONG MUFFLER

by Marjorie Lewis ‧ RELEASE DATE: Dec. 3, 1982

Ernie, home recovering from chicken pox, learns to knit from his sailor uncle Simon. Back at school the other boys tease him at first but change their tune when he tells the class how sailors knit while ""waiting for things to happen."" He also shares his plan to make the Book of World Records by knitting a mile-long muffler. Soon the whole class has taken up knitting and Ernie is spending every spare minute clicking needles. ""By Thanksgiving, Ernie's muffler was sixteen feet long and Ernie was looking pale."" And so when classmate Cynthia, who's good at math, informs him that he'd have to add about 27 feet a day just to finish the muffler by the end of fourth grade, Ernie decides to take it easy and go back to some of the activities he enjoyed before the muffler project. By spring, when he decides that the muffler, at 314 feet, is long enough, he and the knitting class have become locally famous. Now they all get their picture in the paper with Ernie in the very pose he'd imagined for the Book of World Records. Though Apple's depiction of these home and classroom scenes is surprisingly drab, the story is an agreeable, easygoing study in knowing when to be easygoing.

Pub Date: Dec. 3, 1982

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Coward, McCann & Geoghegan

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 1982

Categories: CHILDREN'S