Booktalking Colorado - Full Booktalk Record

Booktalking Colorado Full Record:

	Title:	The Canning Season
	Author:	Horvath, Polly
	Date Published:	2003
	Genre:	Real Life
	Grade Level:	6 - 8
	Booktalker:	Sam Marsh

Booktalk:
Henriette was once again telling Ratchet about how she got her name. It was when Ratchet was born, and Henriette was arguing in the hospital about what to name her. There was a tool on the windowsill of the room in which Henriette had forced the hospital to put her. "Its not a ratchet, it's a lug wrench," her father had said. But, Henriette had been impervious. When the nurse came in with the birth certificate, Ratchet's father was out of the room, so Henriette simply she filled out Ratchet Ratchet Clark, just to drive her husband crazy. "Oh, and by the way," Henriette finished the story; "You're going to Maine tonight." To spend the summer with great-second cousins, Tilly (tiny and thin) and Penpen (round and jolly), where Henriette had spent her summers when she was young. It was a surprise to Ratchett, and the only place Henriette could think of to send Ratchet for an "away-from-home experience." Henriette never mentioned the man she was seeing. Not being very good at planning, she forgot to send the suitcase with Ratchet's clothes. It turned out that Penpen and Tilly lived very remotely at Glen Rosa, all alone at the end of a road far from town and surrounded by blueberry bushes. When it was time to pick blueberries, one of the sisters always stood by with a gun while the other picked the berries. Penpen and Tilly were ninety-one. They were twins, although not identical, had always lived together at the house, and planned to die together. And, Tilly had been having recurring heart attacks. They had tried to explain to Henriette that if something were to happen to them Ratchet would be in big trouble, what with all the bears that liked blueberries. Unless Ratchet learned to drive the Daimler, of course. Henriette, of course, had not listened. It was late when she arrived and Tilly drove them home, never going over 20 miles per hour, and stopped periodically in the dark to avoid another bear. But, eventually they made it to Glen Rosa, and Ratchet started to settle in. She had no interest, however, in learning to drive. Then, Harper showed up. She was a year older than Ratchet, and her "aunt" had been trying to find the orphanage since she just couldn't handle two children in Canada, where she was heading to have her baby. But, she took the wrong turn and . . . well ended up at Glen Rosa. She was so self-adsorbed, sort of a Henriette clone, and talked so fast that she left before finding out that she had left Harper at the wrong place. Harper was what one might call a 'live-wire.' She was never one to hesitate to say what was on her mind or to do something she was interested in. For instance, there was the time that Penpen decided to teach the two youngsters how to drive. Ratchet got in the back and hid her face, while Harper got in the front with Pen-Pen and gunned the accelerator. Straight towards the cliff. Without knowing how to stop. When she did finally manage to stop five feet before oblivion for the three of them, Penpen had her first heart attack. They thereafter referred to it as the "time that Harper almost scared Penpen to death."