Indiana

3M said, "What about A Girl Named Zippy for Indiana?"

When Haven Kimmel was born in 1965, Mooreland, Indiana was a sleepy little hamlet of three hundred people. Nicknamed "Zippy" for the way she would run around like a circus monkey, this small girl was possessed of big eyes and even bigger ears. In this lovingly told memoir, Kimmel takes readers back in time to when small-town America was still trapped in the amber of the innocent post-war period: people help their neighbors, go to church, keep barnyard animals in their backyards.

To three-year-old Zippy, it makes perfect sense to strike a bargain with her father to keep her baby bottle — never mind that when she does, it's the first time she's ever spoken. The words never stop once Zippy finds her voice, and it is a voice that Kimmel captures perfectly page after page. In her nonplussed family, Zippy has the ideal supporting cast: her beautiful yet dour brother, Danny, a seeker of the true faith; her sweetly sensible sister, Lindy, who wins the local beauty pageant; her mother, Delonda, who dispenses wisdom from the corner of the couch; and her father, Bob Jarvis, who never met a bet he didn't take. The world seen through Zippy's eyes is vivid and occasionally mind-boggling, especially when Zippy grapples with the meaning of time and has to go lie in a "worm hole" to recover.

Whether describing a serious case of chicken love, another episode with the evil old woman across the street, or the night Zippy's dad borrows thirty-six coon dogs and a raccoon to prove to the complaining neighbors just how quiet his two dogs are, Kimmel treats readers to a heroine as appealing, naive, and knowing as Scout Finch as she navigates the quirky adult world surrounding Zippy.