memoirs

"Zippy" is a gem! I'd give it 20 stars!! Nicknamed for her propensity to "zip" around the house, Zippy gives us a childs look into an adult world. In this charming memoir, you meet her parents who very clevery keep up with their rambunctious doughter, siblings who tell her she was adopted, and friends who pick on her, pinch her, and love her. Zippy has a unique fondness for staying dirty, getting SPITTING mad, visiting the emergency room, and picking her scabs, which are described in such a way that you find these habits to be delightful and cute. Each chapter has such funny moments, that you can't help but laugh out loud and fall in love with Zippy after each page. This book is a fresh glimpse into a simple but incredibly complex town in Indiana back in the 1960's.

"A Girl Named Zippy" is a memoir of a childhood in a small Indiana town in the 1960s and 70s. The memories were generally happy ones, no abuse, no divorce, no deaths. One reviewer called Zippy's family dysfunctional. I didn't see them that way. The father gambled and drank and had no visible job, but these facts hardly seemed to affect Zippy. Her mother spent all her time reading, and one year the family's artificial Christmas tree was still up in late March. Sounds perfectly normal to me.

Some reviewers complained about the incidents of cruelty to animals and Zippy's lack of any religious principles. Neither of these aspects of the book bothered me. I thought the animal incidents and descriptions were the only boring parts of the book. So what if she had no religious feeling. If you haven't got it, you haven't got it. I could sympathize with Zippy's boredom in church.

The book was mildly entertaining and a fairly pleasant way to fill a long afternoon.

Haven Kimmel's childhood was not punctuated by alcoholism or abuse. No one died young, no one tortured the young girl, and she wasn't raised in some exotic location. On the contrary, Haven's childhood was probably like a lot of people's...without major drama but full of interesting people and little stories that make for a wholesome read. I found this book very easy to get into and finish, and exceptionally refreshing compared to the majority of memoirs these days that focus on the negative. I guarantee readers of Zippy will come away with a deep appreciation for Haven's parents for raising her in a happy, and healthy environment that produced a great writer to boot.