“It was the summer before Emma Phineas Wilkey (who everyone called Ferris) went into the fifth grade.
It was the summer that the ghost appeared to Charisse, the summer that Ferris’s sister, Pinky Wilkey, devoted herself to becoming an outlaw, and the summer that Uncle Ted left Aunt Shirley and moved into the Wilkey basement to paint a history of the world.
It was the summer that Ferris’s best friend, Billy Jackson, played a song called ‘Mysterious Barricades’ over and over again on the piano.”
Ferris is a summer book. It’s filled with quirky, caricature characters. The theme line repeated throughout the book is: “Every story is a love story. Every good story is a love story.” And this story embodies that theme.
However, the story also gives readers some outlandish, exaggerated characters who showcase the difficulties and barriers to that love in the real world. Ferris, the main character, is a ten year old rule follower and observer. Her little sister, Pinky, is a six year old thief and would-be outlaw bank robber. Seriously, among other unbelievable and laugh-out-loud escapades, Pinky tries to rob a bank to get her name and picture on a wanted poster. Ferris’s and Pinky’s parents are inept at best, but loving and involved even when they can’t do anything about Pinky’s mayhem or the raccoons in the attic. Charisse, Ferris’s grandmother, has a heart condition and sees a ghost who wants someone to light the chandelier in the dining room with forty candles, a chandelier that has never been lit before. Uncle Ted is called to paint a history of the entire world on the basement walls, but all he can do is paint a blob that is supposed to be a foot.
It all sounds prosaic and weird when I tell it, but when Kate DiCamillo takes over and tells the story it becomes poetic, a love story. I think the basic idea is that we love people even in their weirdness and unfathomability. Love them even when we don’t understand and when their behavior is out of control (like Pinky), and when they see demanding ghosts that we can’t see. Or when they feel a calling that we don’t understand. Love them despite the “mysterious barricades” that attempt to come between us and those that we love.
Vocabulary, language, and words are a big part of this book, too. Ferris’s and Billy’s former teacher, Mrs. Mielk, taught them a lot of words, and that vocabulary is woven into the story of the children and their summer adventures. I loved all of the vocabulary that filled the story with the joy of language.
I’ll close with a few quotes to give you a flavor of the book. It’s definitely odd and unusually humorous and endearing, while dealing with serious subjects such as aging, broken relationships, reconciliation, and death. Ferris is a great narrator, childlike and unknowingly insightful at the same time, and Pinky is amazing in her incorrigible delinquency.
“Pinky was six years old, and even though Ferris was her older sister, she did not understand Pinky on a cellular level. Pinky was a fearsome mystery.”
“Monomaniacal. That was another Mielk vocabulary word. It described Pinky perfectly. She was only interested in one thing: being an outlaw.”
“You are too much of a rule follower, Ferris,” Charisse had said to her once. “You have to insist on being yourself. Do not let the world tell you who you are. Rather, tell the world who you are. Pinky understands this. She takes it to an extreme, of course.”
“These people,” he said, “are afraid to love. Loving someone takes a whole lot of courage. Some people just aren’t up to the task.”
“The dogs bark but the caravan passes by.” (Ferris’s dad’s favorite maxim)