Growing Up Small

A Girl Named Zippy: Growing up Small in Mooreland, Indiana by Haven Kimmel.

This witty memoir about growing up in a small town in the 1970s is quirky, endearing and laugh-out-loud funny.  Although populated with some peculiar characters, this autobiography is not a depressing account of dysfunction. There is something joyful and uplifting, though certainly not pedestrian or saccharine, about Zippy’s unique angle of vision. This autobiography has a casual, episodic feel, consisting of linked tales of memorable incidents of her girlhood (her pet chicken, the mean old lady down the street). There are sad parts, such as her pet pony being sold off to pay her father’s gambling debts, but the overall tone is delightful and droll.

One of the charming things about this book is the author’s voice – knowing, sarcastic, endearing – and when you listen to the audio version you get the double pleasure of really hearing the author’s voice, since it is read by her.

If you enjoy A Girl Named Zippy, be sure to listen to the sequel:  She Got Up Off the Couch: and other heroic acts from Mooreland, Indiana. She Got Up Off the Couch has more hilarious anecdotes about growing up in small-town Indiana, with a focus on the author’s mother who goes back to college in the early 1970s.

~posted by Paige C.