Quincy Rumpel

Priscilla Galloway was an English consultant in Willowdale, Ontario.

Quincy Rumpel wants a Save-the-Whales T-shirt, pierced ears, and a dog. Her dad, a teacher-turned-businessman, wants his mushroom factory, located in the garage, to flourish. Her mother wants perpetual rain in Vancouver so that her new job in Uncle George’s umbrella business will be secure.

Impetuous Quincy is constantly in trouble, from getting locked out on the tiny balcony of their new house, to putting a foot through her parents’ bedroom ceiling. The neighbours call the fire department one day and lift Quincy down through the hole onto the plaster-covered new bedspread the next. When non-cook Quincy makes spaghetti, she decides that “sauté” means soak, and uses half a bottle of oil and twenty-three cloves of garlic. Is she perhaps competing with her cousin Gwen, who has some sort of compulsion to toss off batches of perfect hot cheese biscuits? Life around Quincy, her sister Leah, and her brother Morris is never dull.

Betty Waterton has written another light-hearted, wholesome story, full of zany characters and episodic action. Many youngsters eight to eleven years old who don’t feel very confident about themselves as readers will find this book easy and fun.