Product Description

1968 looks like it'll be a pretty good year for Jaynell Lambert. The town's going to pave the dirt road she lives on, her girly-girl sister, Racine, isn't driving her completely crazy, and Grandpap has just moved in with his new emerald green Cadillac convertible. Jaynell and Grandpap have something special. But why won't Grandpap tell her the reason he visits with the dirt-poor Pickens family on the other side of town? When Jaynell finds out Grandpap's secret, the legacy of an old man transforms a family, and a town.

"At once gritty and poetic, stark and sentimental . . . a solid page turner. Holt once again displays her remarkable gift." (School Library Journal, starred review)

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #681417 in Books
• Published on: 2002-11-11
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 176 pages

From School Library Journal

Gr 5-8-Eleven-year-old Jaynell Lambert often slips into the junkyard beside her house and sits behind the wheel of a salvaged car, "driving" herself wherever her imagination will take her. It is the summer of 1968 in a desolate Texas town, and her recently widowed grandfather has left his homestead to move into the Lambert house, where his increasingly bizarre behavior convinces Jaynell's parents that he is becoming senile. With Jaynell in tow, Grandpap makes daily treks to the cemetery to talk to the headstones of Moon's departed citizens, and he impulsively buys a gaudy emerald green Cadillac convertible that he allows his granddaughter to drive in open fields. Even though she empathizes with her grandfather's loneliness and his quirky methods of coping with it, the child is aghast when he gives away his own unoccupied homestead to the town's dirt-poor social outcasts. After his sudden death, her family contrives to reclaim the property that they feel is rightfully their own, and Jaynell learns sobering lessons about the dark side of human nature yet at the same time discovers honesty, courage, and kindness in unlikely places. This nostalgic parable about loss and redemption is at once gritty and poetic, stark and sentimental, howlingly funny and depressingly sad, but it is a solid page-turner. Holt once again displays her remarkable gift for creating endearingly eccentric characters as well as witty dialogue rich in dialect and idiom.-William McLoughlin, Brookside School, Worthington, OH

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
Gr. 5-7. In Holt's National Book Award winner, When Zachary Beaver Came to Town (1999), and in My Louisiana Sky (1998), both Booklist Editors' Choices, the southern small-town settings were an integral part of the story, and the particulars were spare and telling. Here the authentic local color about Moon, Texas, in 1968 sometimes takes over the story, and there are just too many town characters to visit. At 11, Jaynell is a tomboy (Daddy calls her "boy"). Unlike her ultrafeminine sister, she loves to hunt, practice driving, and watch the preparations for the first trip to the moon. She watches over Grandpap as he visits his wife's grave, wanders around town, and buys a Cadillac for cash. Why does he help a "white-trash" family move into his old home? Jaynell's first-person narrative is strong and tender. It's her story and the discovery of a wounding family secret that keeps you reading. Hazel Rochman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review
"Set against a backdrop of a small town in Texas in 1968, Kimberly Willis
Holt's fourth novel brims with the wisdom and humor that have become her
trademarks." -Kirkus -- Review

Customer Reviews

Tales from the "Piney Woods"
I can turn my head to the right as we pass a little grey shack on the new blacktop road and see a big green Cadillac sitting in the dirt driveway. Wonder how those folk can afford that, I might wonder as we whiz by. Kimberly Holt has the answers in her book "Dancing in Cadillac Light". The story, read in one sitting, swept me along because I know these people or maybe their "kin". Growing up in small town Louisiana and living in East Texas, I know first hand that Mrs. Holt has nailed this time and place down perfectly. That's what I like so much about all her books. They are about real places, and especially real people.

Quick, Easy, Heartwarming
I met Ms. Holt in ... (basis for her fictional town of Moon). She is like her characters...down-to-earth, witty, and honest. As a twenty-seven year old teacher, I read this novel for three reasons: its setting ... I've read her other novels and loved them, and to find new reading material for recommendation to my students. I was not disappointed. Jaynell and her family are easy to identify with, easy to follow, and easy to love. The story line is not difficult and the messages ring all too true! Pick this one up, you won't stop 'till the end.

Ride along with Jaynell
Jaynell Lambert misses her grandmother something awful. So does her grandfather. Grandpap has hardly said a word since his wife died. Finally, Jaynell's parents bring Grandpap to live with them, and Jaynell is forced to share a room with her younger sister Racine. Even though Racine is only eleven months younger, She and Jaynell couldn't be more different. Racine loves to dance and giggle with her friends. Jaynell likes to go with Grandpap and fish and ride in his car. And Jaynell's dad has asked her to keep a extra close eye on Grandpap....he's been mighty strange as of late. This wonderful book by Kimberly Willis Holt explores the social differences in small town life, how we are afraid of that which is different, and how a young girl learns to honor the legacy left by someone she loves.