Suddenly Jenny can hear what people are thinking. Her enterprising and electronically-inclined brothers immediately think of ways to take advantage of this unusual talent but Jenny is less comfortable with her new knowledge. The adventure culminates in a plot by the children to get Jenny on game shows and win enough money to buy land that is otherwise destined for the developer's table, but all their efforts may not be enough as everything spirals out of control.
This one is a childhood, well, not fave, exactly, but a comfortable reminder of my youth. Also, when I first read it, it didn't seem so out of date as it does now. It's almost quaint, in its depictions of a model New England town, wherein young boys are excited as anything to get a pile of cast off electronics so they can make radios and invent closed-circuit television. Nowadays, of course, it's a lot easier to set up camera and recording systems. That is, everyone (including me) can do it, because cameras do it automatically. All the discussion of the magic of intercom systems (and the accompanying explanations to bewildered parents and teachers) and the ringing of phones underline my point: the crucial action which takes place at the end of the book and enables Jenny at al. to keep their beautiful lake and forest (nb: that was not a spoiler. I mean, come on, what kinds of kid's books do you read that you think they won't get to save the land from suburban stasis?) could have easily been averted by an operational cell phone.
It's a sweet, nostalgic book, in which the government wants only to protect children who have magnificent mind-reading abilities, and the president just bemoans the loss of his buttons in the morning, where men and women fall in love and get engaged after a week, and parents let their children cook up cock-eyed schemes to defraud people with a "It probably wouldn't do any harm to try. . . "
There isn't any character development to speak of, as the action drives the plot. The trouble with Jenny's ear doesn't even enter the story for a good fifth of the way into the book, and we spend our time watching her brothers wreck all kinds of havoc with their gadgets before they get around to Jenny's ear. It's a slow, easy-going pace, even if (as a repeat reader) I wanted to hurry up and get to the meat of the story.
Jenny remains sweet and wholesome throughout, and perhaps gains a little backbone by the end. She plays the role of the wise old person, dispensing wisdom and serenity with both hands, despite being only five years old. It's all a light bit of fluff, a "cute little trick" of a book that manages to get its protagonists through crisis after crisis without demonizing anyone. There are no villains, only gently misunderstood people, and everything ties up in a neat little bow in the end. All in all, a harmless bit of fluff.
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