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“I did not belong here. I had known this a long time, I suppose, but the tunnel vision embodied in my father's gesture crystallized this truth. I was not a creature of the high country.” T.S. Spivet, the twelve-year-old narrator of this most unusual novel, is a mapmaking genius and scientific illustrator extraordinaire. He loves his family but feels alienated from them in his strange obsession to map every aspect of the world; their Montana ranch feels too small to contain his brilliance. When he learns that he has won a prestigious science award from the Smithsonian, T.S. doesn't let his youth or inexperience deter him: he hops a freight train, hobo-style, and takes off for our nation's capital, armed only with a couple of changes of clothes, a wide assortment of scientific instruments, and a single stolen volume of his mother's entomological notes, which turns out not to be at all what he expected.
What makes The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet so compelling is that we get to glimpse the inside of T.S.'s extraordinarily busy mind via the dozens of tiny, detailed maps, drawings, lists, charts, diagrams, and explanations that fill the book's margins. Here is a schematic that reveals how he navigated the Smithsonian automated phone menu. Later, a minuscule drawing demonstrates the relative merits of a juice box vs. a juice pouch. Fiction, he admits, is difficult to map; Moby-Dick has him stumped. But everything, everything in the physical world seems ripe for quantifying. At times T.S. seems more than brilliant; he seems to have an almost savant syndrome-like need to record his interactions with and observations of the world around him. Yet his fears, his homesickness, his guilt over the role he may have played in his little brother's death are deeply touching. As odd as he may be, T.S. is also very human, and his Selected Works is both a grand adventure tale and a single, highly detailed snapshot of a boy on the verge of becoming a young man.
Recommended by Anne
Steve Ross
Steve Ross, aka Mr. Steve, is a Vroman's institution. In addition to working in the Vroman's Children's Department, he is also our DVD and bargain book buyer. He will find you a bargain, if there's one to be found. He is also the host of Vroman's popular Storytime with Mr. Steve, Wednesdays and Saturdays at 10am.
"I was hired at Vroman's Bookstore in 1989. Since then, I have become something of an expert in Kid's Books and remainder buying.
My blog: http://mrstevesstorytime.blogspot.com/
To see the Kimmidoll "commercial" I created for Vroman's (plus a lot of other tomfoolery): http://www.youtube.com/user/maskrado"
Mr. Steve’s High Fidelity-like Top Five Lists
Top Five Picture Books for Storytime (in print as of 2010):
1. Fish Out of Water – Helen Palmer
2. That Rabbit Belongs to Emily Brown – Cressida Cowell
3. Three Little Wolves and the Big Bad Pig - Eugene Trivizas
4. Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus - Mo Willems
5. Beware of the Frog – William Bee
Top Five Favorite Novelists (Kid’s Dept.):
1. Derek Landy – Skulduggery Pleasant
2. Dean Lorey – Nightmare Academy
3. Anthony Horowitz – Alex Rider
4. Suzanne Collins – Hunger Games
5. Michael Carroll – Quantum Prophecy
Top Five Favorite Graphic Novel Authors
1. Alan Moore – Watchmen, V for Vendetta, Ballad of Halo Jones
2. John Wagner – Strontium Dog, Judge Dredd, Button Man, A History of Violence
3. Pat Mills – Slaine, Nemesis the Warlock, Marshal Law
4. Ben Dunn – Ninja High School, Warrior Nun Areala, Marvel Mangaverse
5. Evan Dorkin – Milk and Cheese, Dork!
Top Five Favorite Authors (Who Got Mr. Steve Interested in Books Without Pictures):
1. Edgar Rice Burroughs (Tarzan, John Carter of Mars)
2. Kenneth Robeson/Lester Dent (Doc Savage)
3. Grant Stockbridge/Norvell Page (The Spider)
4. L. Ron Hubbard (Final Blackout, Golden Age Stories)
5. Robert E. Howard (Conan, Solomon Kane)
Top Five Favorite Writers (Adult):
1. Maria Amparo Escandon – Esperanza’s Box of Saints, Gonzalez and Daughter Trucking Co.
2. don Miguel Ruiz – Five Agreements, Voice of Knowledge
3. Susan Gregg - The Toltec Way
4. Walter Moers – 13 ½ Lives of Captain Bluebear, Rumo
5. Vern – Seagalogy: A Study of the @$$-Kicking Films of Steven Seagal
Top Five Favorite Book Subjects:
1. Action and Exploitation Movies
2. Guinea Pigs
3. ‘80s New Wave Bands
4. Pro Wrestling (especially lucha libre)
5. Comics and graphic novels, especially Britian's 2000 A.D.
Favorite Kid’s Novel That Should Never Should Have Gone Out of Print, and Should Be Made Into a Major Motion Picture ™:
1. Sir MacHinery by Tom McGowen