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- The Pepins and their Problems
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- Author: Polly Horvath
- Reviewer: Ilona Hegedûs
- Publisher: Thorndike Press, Thorndike, Maine
- Format: Children, Fiction, Hardcover, 174 Pages, 2004, $22.95
- ISBN: 0786270632
- Rating: * * Quills
- www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/asin/0786270632/scriquil
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- Award-winning American writer Polly Horvath has written many successful children's books, and her books have been translated into many languages, including German, French, Thai, Japanese, Danish and Italian.
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- In "The Pepins and their Problems" we get to know the life of the Pepin family — Mr. and Mrs. Pepin, their children and their pets — and also that of their neighbors. The daughter is called Petunia, and the son Irving is thought to be a little genius. What all the Pepins have in common is that neither of them are very clever, and this is a problem to such an extent that it makes them incapable of solving any problem.
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- The story is a series of adventures and funny situations, which all start with an unexpected event. With new problems constantly arising until they manage to find a solution with the help of the reader, it's always a long way to go.
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- Such inexplicable events include the appearance of frogs in all the shoes, the cow switching to drink lemonade only, or the sudden appearance of a stranger, who later turns out to be the long lost relative Bartholomew William Culbert Pepin, and his wife Junebug. The family has talking animals, who also have their share in working out the solutions. These include a dog named Roy, Miranda the cat and a cow named Nelly. Valuable contributions are also made by their neighbor, the inventor Mr. Bradshaw.
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- The book is written for the very young, and requires active contribution from the reader, whose task it is to help the Pepins, by adding a special sort of interactivity. If the reader concentrates hard enough, the writer will hear the proposed solutions and will forward them to the main characters.
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- On the other hand, the repeated use of such interactive parts makes the stories much less exciting, and I am not convinced about their credibility, even for the target audience. If readers, however, believe the author to be the only one in the world with whom they can get into a telepathic contact, thus acquiring a sort of invisible friend, we can also think of this interactivity in terms of marketing, and this raises certain questions with regards to ethics.
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- Nevertheless, as the Pepins learn to solve their problems in the end, the writer has the opportunity to teach something about self-reliance, and the utterly unexpected events described have the potential to entertain.
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