An extremely fanciful tale that I enjoyed once I decided to suspend disbelief.

"Our teacher last year had shown us a film strip of microscopic life in a drop of water, and I thought that it should have had an R rating; I found the unseen world violent, full of sex and with no redeeming social value." What a metaphor. It rings so true (although I think life in a drop of water does have redeeming social value).

"The trouble with logical explanations was that they only made sense. They never explained senses." My emotional self understands the depth of this statement, but when I try to cross over into my left brain to explain it logically, I can't find the words to describe. And that, in and of itself, is a perfect example of the truth of these sentences.

Jeanmarie Troxell and Malcolm Soo are two latch-key kids living in a New York trailer park. They become friends when they team up to bury and give funerals for dead animals they find in their neighborhood. Their burial ground is a place they christen Jericho Tel, and it is beneath this makeshift cemetery that they meet Tallulah. Tallulah is a dead actress who enlists Jeanmarie and Malcolm to help her find the Regina Stone, which someone stole from her body as she was dying. In doing Tallulah's bidding, Jeanmarie and Malcolm come to meet some of her eccentric perfomer friends and they work together to solve the puzzle of what exactly happened at the moment of Tallulah's death.

Until now, I thought (George) was E.L. Konigsburg's weirdest novel, but Up From Jericho Tel has definitely given it some competition. What makes it so odd and therefore so intriguing is the fact that so little is explained. Why does Tallulah want the help of these specific kids? What does their burial of dead animals have to do with her finding them? What is the point, really, of seeking out the Regina Stone? The story doesn't really address any of these issues; rather, the reader is just plunked down in the middle of these unlikely events and asked to accept them.

Obviously some of what Konigsburg is trying to get at involves fame, as both Jeanmarie and Malcolm wish to be famous and Tallulah became so during her lifetime. Tallulah also waxes philosophical at every turn, and she has a lot of wonderful one-line insights that really resonated with me. Still, it is impossible to really articulate what this book is truly about; giving a booktalk to a child reader would be difficult to say the least. I think the only way to present it, honestly, is to say it's a Konigsburg book and trust readers who have enjoyed some of her less "out there" books to know what that means and to bring an open mind to the story.

Though it's not my favorite Konigsburg, reading this book was a fun way to spend a few evenings. I don't think I'll be likely to re-read this one any time soon, but it is definitely very different, and despite its many quirks, the quality of the writing is top-notch. Even a not-very-interesting plot is made somehow engaging by Konigsburg's unique voice. With this author, it's never so much what she writes that I enjoy, but how she writes it.

This review also appears on my blog, Read-at-Home Mom.

I never hear this book spoken of when people wax rhapsodic about the young adult lit that really moved them. To me, this was as seminal and creative as the Roald Dahls I returned to over and over again. It's got everything! Magic, mystery, Tallulah Bankhead ...

my favorite book of all time.

I know I read this once, but it was so long ago. I do think that I need to read it again. It made a big impression on me way back when.

When somebody gave me Up From Jericho Tel I was thrilled. A book by E.L. Konigsburg I hadn't read; I hadn't even heard of it!

There really wasn't anything for me to like about the story, except Tallulah, who is full of clever quotes:
•tMy favorite:“Good explanations are like bathing suits, darling; they are meant to reveal everything by covering only what is necessary.”
•t“Never have a long conversation between anyone who says ‘between you and I.’”
•t“I have never been a fan of fashion but I am a devotee of style. Remember that, darling. Stars have style.”
•t“Really, darling, don’t seek great reviews from small minds. They have neither the character nor the vocabulary for them.”
•t“I have never understood why people who have knocked themselves out to become stars, afterwards knock themselves out to prove they’re just folks.”
•t“Always use good grammar. It’s like wearing designer clothing. People may not like your style, but they will pay attention to the cut of your cloth.”
•tMy second favorite: “If ever you want to learn the difference between accuracy and truth, look at a photograph of Gertrude Stein and then look at Picasso’s portrait of her.”

Jeanmarie has just moved from Texas to New York City with her mother, and the new school is brutal.

The girl clones at Singer Grove were just like the ones in Texas; they knocked themselves out to be like everyone else and then bragged about how they were different. All their differences put into a pot and boiled down wouldn’t spice baby food. By trying to brag about how different they were, they just really showed how alike they were, because all their differences were alike.

Jeanmarie, on the other hand, is original: she wants to be a famous actress and definitely has a dramatic streak. One day she finds a dead animal and decides to give it a burial. She meets Malcom Soo, who sees her checking out the dead animal, and they become friends. From there, they meet Tallulah, who is dead, and she sends them on a quest involving several tasks. But none of them are interesting and neither are the other characters.

But Tallulah's quotes are sometimes amusing,

"(D)on't seek great reviews from small minds. They have neither the character nor the vocabulary for them."

—Tallulah, Up from Jericho Tel, P. 107

Eccentric stories are not an outlier to E.L. Konigsburg's award-winning career, but Up from Jericho Tel might be her most eccentric. Jeanmarie Troxell, a sixth-grader, has had a rough go of it since moving with her mother to Singer Grove, New York from Texas. Kids at school show no interest in making Jeanmarie's acquaintance, and her mother works long hours as a security officer at Kennedy International Airport. Jeanmarie's hidden ambition is to be a famous actress, but she's afraid of being laughed at if she tells even her own mother, and she doesn't know her teachers well enough to feel comfortable trying out for school plays. By happenstance, Jeanmarie meets a boy her age named Malcolm Soo when they find a small dead animal close to the bus stop. They bury the poor creature in a clearing by the Empire Estates Mobile Homes Park where they both live—Jeanmarie names the clearing Jericho Tel, to lend it a sense of gravitas—and from that day forth they hold a proper funeral for every dead animal they come across. It's the starting point for a tentative friendship.

"A happy person strikes a balance between doing good and doing well."

—Tallulah, P. 176

When Jeanmarie and Malcolm find a dead Dalmatian near Jericho Tel, they realize burying the dog will be more difficult than doing the same for a squirrel. They need to dig deep with their shovels, and when they do that, the ground they're standing on caves in, depositing the two kids in an underground grotto. There they meet the ghost of Tallulah, a glamorous movie actress who died years ago. The Dalmatian they were about to bury is hers, sent Topside as a test of Jeanmarie and Malcolm's personal character. Tallulah has a couple of other tests to see if they're worthy of sending on her big quest, and when Jeanmarie and Malcolm pass these tests, Tallulah addresses the real reason she has summoned them to her final resting place. When she died, Tallulah wore a gem called the Regina Stone around her neck, a good-luck piece she credited with getting her career off the ground. Tallulah died in the presence of several bohemian friends—Nicolai Ion Simonescu, Patrick Henry Mermelstein, and Emmagene Krebs among them—and though Tallulah loved them all, the Regina Stone was missing from her neck at her time of death. One of her friends had to have taken it, and Tallulah wants Jeanmarie and Malcolm to find out which. She provides them temporary invisibility to head into sensitive areas for the investigation. Observing Tallulah's quirky friends, Jeanmarie and Malcolm see that these people have had a mix of lean and prosperous times since Tallulah's passing, but only one is responsible for taking the Regina Stone. If Jeanmarie and Malcolm complete Tallulah's quest, they will learn the movie star's secret to stardom that both of them want for their own reasons.

"I have never understood why people who have knocked themselves out to become stars, afterwards knock themselves out to prove they're just folks."

—Tallulah, P. 118

"Always use good grammar. It's like wearing designer clothing. People may not like your style, but they will pay attention to the cut of your cloth."

—Tallulah, P. 138

Up from Jericho Tel is a treasure trove of the luminous insights I love E.L. Konigsburg for, but this can't quite rescue the story. Its supernatural elements are numerous, creating a heavy burden to explain them in a way that allows the aspects of realistic fiction to stay anchored in believability. Ms. Konigsburg is capable of that degree of forethought and cleverness, but we see little of it in these pages. Most of her novels range from good to great, but Up from Jericho Tel is a rare failure by this author who produced much excellent literature. I do appreciate the covert reference to her grandchildren—Samuel and Amy Elizabeth—on page one hundred seven. She later used them as characters in three of her picture books from the 1990s. I'm not a fan of Up from Jericho Tel, but I'd bump my rating to one and a half stars because of its memorable quotes. If that's your favorite part of E.L. Konigsburg's writing, this book is worth your time.

Not one of my favorite E. L. Konigsburg books- it didn't have quite the impact of her more well-known novels. Still, it was a quick & enjoyable read.

This is not my favorite E.L. Konigsburg book, though I adore her on general principles: she is one of very few authors I've written fan letters to in my life--and she is one of even fewer who responded. Up from Jericho Tel is a strange mishmash of realism with fantastic elements that aren't really fully explained or even made clear for some time into the book--I kept wondering if I was really understanding what was going on. I did enjoy the characters and was interested in the plot, but it just ended up feeling a little thin overall. Maybe with some fleshing out, it could have been a better book.

2012 nov, e710

Sometimes I feel like the inimitable Ms. Konigsburg just puts plot elements into a paper bag, shakes it, pulls out a few, and thinks "YA GOLD!" This one works though: kids who bury dead animals for a hobby, a subterranean Tallulah Bankhead, and a motley collection of buskers, ventriloquists, and inept musicians. Also, there's a jewel-heist mystery. ("I've always wanted to be part of a heist!")

Seriously, this one's impossible to explain, but it's worth reading, and like all Konigsburg books, can be completed in an afternoon.

I read this book as I was exploring books to read with/to my 5th and 6th grade class. I ended up loving it and read it to them with all of the voices of different characters! They loved it! And I loved it! Read it!