SELLING HOPE gets a STARRED REVIEW from Booklist!

Hi, all! I received some delightful news earlier: Selling Hope received a lovely starred review from the wonderful folks at Booklist! The entire review is below. Thank you so much, Booklist and Ian Chipman! What a thrill and honor. I am filled with gratitude.

P.S. The star isn't coming through in my cut-and-paste action; just imagine a lovely star in the spot in front of the title, instead of the asterisk I've placed there. ;-)

*Selling Hope.

Tubb, Kristin O' Donnell (Author)

Nov 2010. 224 p. Feiwel and Friends, hardcover, $16.99. (9780312611224).

In 1910, Halley’s Comet caused quite a pandemonium. Thirteen-year-old Hope, a smart and smarty-pants

heroine, travels the country on the low-level vaudeville circuit with her magician dad, but she desperately

wants to ditch the show and stay in Chicago. To do that they’ll need money, and in a flash of inspiration,

Hope whips up a side business selling “anti-comet” pills (thinly disguised mints) to hysterical people

convinced the comet will bring any number of horrendous calamities with it. She gets help from another

kid in the show, Buster Keaton, who, aside from being adept at slapstick, is handy at bringing a blush to

Hope’s cheeks. Tubb deftly ingrains a thoughtful ethical question into the story (is Hope really helping

people by assuaging their fears or simply ripping them off?) but never overdoes it in this bouncy tale

populated by a terrific cast of characters. The well-synthesized period flavor extends right down to the

one-liners that punctuate Hope’s earnest, easygoing, and perfectly pitched narration (“This morning’s

gravy was so thick, when I stirred it, the room spun around!”). In the end, though, it’s Hope’s relationship

with her father—a sort of proto-hippy-dippy naturalist who often seems more of a child than Hope—that

steals the spotlight with a gentle and well-earned tug of the heartstrings.

— Ian Chipman