Davy Crockett Saves the World

Amazon.com Amazon.com Review (ISBN 0688169910, Hardcover)

In this two-million-mile tall tale (praised to the skies by National Public Radio commentator and children's book author Daniel Pinkwater), famed American frontiersman Davy Crockett saves the planet, is elected to Congress, and gets the girl and a coonskin cap. Rosalyn Schanzer's outrageous story was inspired by a series of 19th-century comic almanacs about Crockett, source of wildly embellished legend: "Why, Davy could whip ten times his weight in wildcats and drink the Mississippi River dry." Here, Davy Crockett is called upon by the president to wring the tail off Halley's comet--"the biggest, baddest ball of fire and ice and brimstone ever to light up the heavens"--which is hurling itself toward America. One look at Davy, with his chiseled face and gigantic muscles bursting out of his buckskins, and the reader will know the comet hasn't got a chance. Schanzer, whose love of American history is also revealed in How We Crossed the West and Gold Fever!, has a mighty grip on the folksy language and rhythm of the tall tale. After all, "every single word is true, unless it is false." (Ages 5 to 9) --Emilie Coulter