Customer Reviews
Four for Ida 
2008-02-22
Ida B by Katherine Hannigan is an interesting book that any young adult could read. Ida B has always been homeschooled until something tragic happens to her mom. Ida B talks to nature, has ups and downs daily and has an interesting journy through public school. I gave Ida B four stars because when I read the book I wanted to read more and more. If you like fiction books you won't want to miss out on Ida B.
great book for 3-6th graders 
2008-02-06
this was a great book and i would recomend it for and one woul likes a good read. yes she talks to trees that is because she is home school and has no other friends.
Ida B: Maximizes Fun in the Perfect Read for Children and Adults, by Jennie K. Mangum 2007-11-09
Meet Ida B Applewood: bold, passionate, determined, full of spunk, and armed with a plan for everything. While Ida B's life is "righter than right," and full of adventure, fun, and family, her mom's diagnosis of cancer changes everything and instantly forces Ida B to learn how to deal with adult-size problems in a kid-size world. Written as juvenile fiction, Katherine Hannigan is successfully able to reach her intended audience through her use of characterization, point of view, writing mechanics, and use of conflict and internal change. Additionally, her use of universal themes and wit appeal to a much broader audience.
"Superhero Deluxe"
Hannigan successfully develops her protagonist into the embodiment of what every child secretly wishes they could be. After all, Ida B is living the dream. Being homeschooled, Ida B has escaped the drudgery of desks on a tile floor and instead spends her days concocting wild schemes and adventures for her and her dog Rufus. Ida B spends sunny afternoons in her family's apple orchard with a whole forest full of friends (like the trees Beulah, Pastel, and Charlie) or the babbling brook that invites "C'mon out and play, Ida B".
But it's not just Ida B's situation that appeals to children. She's fun and daring, clever and inventive, passionate and noble and symbolizes the innocence, magic, and wonder of childhood. Hannigan characterizes her as a sort of child-hero. After all, Ida B has defied all authority figures and overcome most of the barriers that get in children's way: she has thwarted teachers and school altogether and even has delightful parents that are fun, young, energetic and seem to comply with her every plan and dream. Her life is one of perpetual recess, and Ida's only cares seem to be whether or not she has enough time to visit three places, make six things, and have two conversations all before dinnertime.
Ida B says it best herself: "I was Ida B, Superhero Deluxe, Friend of the Downtrodden, Foe of Cancer, Meanness, Mindless Destruction, and Traditional Schooling". For children, hers is the idyllic model of what childhood should be like, and she becomes a character that her readers identify with and cheer on.
Through the Eyes of Ida
The use of first-person narrative further enriches the story of Ida B by telling it in a voice that is authentic and rings true with the intended audience. It sounds like kid-talk, and invites the readers into Ida B's magical world. Ida B describes "smelling the prettiness" of the blossoms of the apple orchard, or the feeling of "a warm ball in my belly, and the warmth spread out through me so I was heated from the inside out."
Through being told through the eyes of a child, there's much greater attention to detail. While dog slobber might not be included in most books, Ida B observes that "a school of goldfish could go swimming in the pool of drool that [Rufus] makes while he's sleeping." With all the imagery of a child, she more gruesomely depicts her breakfast and "all those little raisins that used to be so happy bobbing around like they were swimming, but now were drowning in a sea of milk."
When it comes to more somber events, Hannigan successfully uses this point-of-view to relate to her intended audience with analogies that make sense to them instead of the vague terms or empty euphemisms that adults tend to use. For instance, when her mom gets sick, Ida B explains, "Cancer is like bugs in a tree: one day you don't see them at all and the next it seems like they're everywhere, eating the leaves and the fruit. And it won't work to find them and squish them one by one. You have to do something drastic."
This use of Ida B's voice effectively communicates and reaches an elementary audience by using a perspective that kids more identify with.
"The Yellow Prison of Propulsion"
The carefully constructed mechanical elements of writing, like Hannigan's imaginative diction, punctuation and capitalization, hyperbole, and alliteration, are what make the story of Ida B come alive.
Rather than generic complaints about school, Ida B describes "The Place of Slow but Sure Body-Cramping, Mind-Numbing, Fun-Killing Torture," and an ordinary box is transformed into "Lulu and her Someday Friends' Big City High-Rise and Exotic Resort." Even simpler phrases, like "it was sitting about two miles beyond wrong with me," help to expose Ida B's personality through her word choice.
Readers will smile at Hannigan's excessive use of dashes, like the Miss-America-the-Miserable-flat-hand-up-and-back-down-again wave, or the top-all-time-silliest-things-grown-ups-say-list. When Ida B is outraged, she says, "I went from a low boil to a bubbling-over-the-top-the-lid's-hardly-on-the-pot furious one in about two seconds."
Hannigan also employs the tool of alliteration to reach her audience by giving her book a more poetic, bouncy, and all around kid-friendly feel. Dad becomes the Deputy of Doom and Disaster, the classroom is christened the Dungeon of Deadly Dullness and Ida B identifies with Distressa, Patron Saint of Dread and Dumbfoundedness.
Through her prose and creative use of writing mechanics, Hannigan further develops characters, plots, and brings a smile to the face of her readers.
"O.K. - for Outrageous Katastrophe"
". . . I knew as long as I was with Mama and Daddy and I was near the mountain and the orchard and the brook, everything would work out. As long as I could be Ida B, I'd be fine."
Of course, Ida B's too-good-to-be-true situation doesn't last forever. When her mom gets cancer, Ida B's world of innocence and magic come crashing down around her. Ida B is sent to public school, her parents are suddenly distant, and her usually positively upbeat household has now become one where "I didn't know if we were trying not to wake Mama or trying not to wake the cancer." To top it all off, her dad has to resort to selling a piece of their orchard--cutting down her trees and selling her land to other kids.
In this time of intense personal conflict, not only does Ida B have to learn how to accept change, but Hannigan also teaches her intended audience important lessons about love, being unselfish, forgiveness, friendship, and growing up.
While Hannigan is ultimately successful in gaining the hearts and trust of her juvenile fiction audience, that is not the only audience she appeals to. The commentary on the human condition and universal life-lessons learned by Ida B are easily identified with, in any age group or any stage in life. Subtle wordplay and details (like trees named Jacques Costeau or a reference to the Venus de Milo) are clearly intended for a more mature audience, who will just as easily fall in love with Ida B.
Ida B:... and Her Plans to Maximize Fun, Avoid Disaster, and (Possibly) Save the World is a hilarious yet meaningful read, perfectly aimed for an elementary audience but one to be treasured and reread by audiences of all ages alike.
Something is missing here... 
2007-10-29
My biggest complaint about this book is that Ida never acknowledges her spoiled, self-absorbed behavior toward her parents. I was expecting a scene at the end of the book where she grows up a little and shows compassion and concern for her mother's health. I was waiting for her to apologize to her parents for her behavior, realizing that her mother didn't get cancer on purpose and her father had no choice but to sell land to pay for medical bills. Instead, she apologizes to the trees and to the river and her classmate, and that's it. To make it worse, she "senses" that her father apologizes to her. It would have been so much better if Ida B. had learned a lesson about life's difficult choices.
I completely loved this book 2007-10-16
I disagree with the parents who think this book is depressing. Ida B. is a beautiful character. She has an ideal life and has been shaken out of it. No one would be happy about that. She learns to deal with her circumstances though, and that is exactly what I loved about the book. I could relate to her aproach to apologizing as "spring cleaning". I was insprired by this book. I cried and I laughed. Ida B. is creative and optomistic. I would recommend this book to anyone.
Ida B Oughta B Ashamed of Herself 
2008-07-01
*SOME SPOILERS*
As a 19-year veteran homeschool mom, I grabbed this one up with excitement - a home educated main character in a respected children's literature novel!! Unfortunately, I'm not sure this character makes an outstanding educational choice role model to present to the masses. Ida B is more befitting of the titles "unschooled" and "spoiled rotten."
Free-spirited Ida B is stifled into Pre-K depression symptoms after one day at the place called school where there are books she could not read, a rabbit she could not pet, and children she could not talk to until the "right time" dictated by the harsh teacher who refuses to add the important initial B to her name. Her mother decides to reawaken Ida B's spirit by home schooling Ida B so that her precious daughter can spend more time telepathically talking to trees each day. (NOTE: SARCASM DEFINITELY INTENDED!) Ida B has a life of idyllic, "nearly perfect" days tending the earth that takes care of her in return until a mean tree spills the beans that something bad is going to happen soon. Her mother finds a cancerous lump which results in long-term treatment. Ida B is perfectly content until the harsh realities of life hit that necessitates a return to school and the sale of part of her land inheritance to assist her beloved parents in paying Mom's hospital bill. Immediately upon Ida B's father developing a backbone by demanding that Ida B obey, she decides to stop liking her parents!?!?
As the mother of seven, I understand that children do not always respond to life's challenges in mature ways, but I found it difficult to fathom that a child who had been nurtured and cherished by devoted homeschooling parents could spew such selfish thoughts towards her frail mother sitting on her daughter's bedside apologizing to poor Ida B for having cancer.
A sad (and inaccurate, I might add) depiction of the social skills of a homeschooled youngin' continues as she boards the bus where she formulates a plan of no friends, no play, no smiling, no happiness. Of more concern, she briefly describes how she will decimate her school into piles of concrete! Of course all this juvenile angst is predictably resolved in the end with a very unsatisfying repentance...to the trees...not Mom.
It's not that Ida B. was the worst book I've ever read, but it definitely made me cringe over the blight on the reputation of the respectable and socially capable homeschooled youth of America!
For children, an easy book with accessible bits of wisom 2008-05-29
Ida B grows up with loving parents, homeschooled, perhaps a bit indulged, definitely lucky - until the luck stops when her mother gets cancer and she is, woe of woes, forced to go back to the school she hated after a few weeks experience in kindergarten. (How many five-year-olds would be thrilled to be pulled out of school after those first few difficult weeks and allowed to stay home with mommy and daddy)
And the now fourth-grade Ida B reacts like many--perhaps most--children would react; selfishly and nastily. She works as hard as she can to punish everyone around her for her 'misfortunes.' Finally, of course, she realises how awful she's being, repents, and makes good with everyone.
Yes, it's a bit over-cute, and yes, Ida B is a bit Too precocious, but I very much enjoyed the book, and would recommend it for children of approximately Ida B's age. I found Ida B's spoilt reaction to a tragedy she doesnt fully understand to be quite realistic, even in a basically sweet child brought up in loving surroundings. She is unhappy and deals with it by making herself more so - not an uncommon reaction.
When, with the help of her teacher, she slowly lets go of her anger and allows herself to get close to people again, her narration says a lot about relationships in general, in a simple way that children can understand without being turned off.
Ida B.? AWESOME!!!!!!!!!! 2008-05-20
Ida B. is so good that I couldn't stop reading it until I was done. I recommend it for adults as well as children and it captures the life of a home schooled tween that loves nature I truly think that it could be a Newberry Honor book.
Ida B.? AWESOME!!!!!!!!!! 2008-05-20
Ida B. is so good that I couldn't stop reading it until I was done. I recommend it for adults as well as children and it captures the life of a home schooled tween that loves nature I truly think that it could be a Newberry Honor book.
Ida B is a great book! 2008-02-27
I really liked the book Ida B by Katherine Hannigan. I thought it was very interesting. The book was realistic and was set in present day. Ida B is about a girl in the fourth grade, her name is Ida B. She has been home schooled for most of her life. Suddenly her parents send her to a public school and she doesn't like it at all. Then Ida B's family sells some of their land. The new owners decided to build a new house there.
One reason why I liked the book is because Ida B is unpredictable. One minute she's happy, sweet, and nice, and the next, she's angry, mean, and yelling at people. You never know how she's going to act. The next reason why I liked Ida B is because of Ida B's reaction to having to go to a public school. I thought it was kind of funny the way she was acting. She was acting mean, and her eyes were like slits. The third reason why I liked the book was when Ida B's new neighbors went to their house for the first time. The two kids went into Ida B's yard. They got closer to her hiding spot, which was a tree and started playing. Ida B was furious and decided to scare the kids.
I think that other people should read the book Ida B. I really liked it, so I think other people will too. I thought it was an awesome book and pretty funny. If you do decide to read Ida B, I think you will really enjoy it.
