The premise was so good and then it got into really fantastical territory. I wish it had stayed more in realistic fiction as some of the plot holes were way too conveniently filled by fantasy elements. I feel it would have been a better message about friendship if it didn't count on the primary friendship being with a sentient computer and a ghost. ( )

Recommended by...the author! Who came to our library.

Bicycle appears at the Mostly Silent Monastery in Washington, D.C. around the age of three, and is taken in by the Mostly Silent monks and Sister Wanda (a retired Mostly Silent nun). Sister Wanda homeschools Bicycle, but when she decides to send her to the Friendship Factory to make friends her own age, Bicycle makes a plan to make friends her own way: she plans a cross-country trip on her trusty bike, Clunk, to the blessing of the bicycles in San Francisco, where she plans to meet and befriend her hero, Polish bike racer Zbig.

On Bicycle's trip across the country, she encounters mostly kindness and encouragement. She picks up a ghost on a Civil War battlefield and drops him off in his hometown; she attends the Kentucky Derby by accident and is accompanied by the winning horse to a SlowDown Cafe, where she helps Chef Marie and gets a Free Eats card; Clunk is trampled but she finds the Fortune to ride the rest of the way, over the Rockies and into Nevada - where Sister Wanda catches up with her.

Bicycle is independent and self-sufficient, and in her own unique way, she develops a sound theory of friendship.

See also: A Tale Magnolious, The Remarkable Journey of Coyote Sunrise

Quotes

"If you think too much about how awful some people might be, you will never get anywhere. None of us would." (Griffin to Bicycle, 74)

"Well, sometimes half-good news is good enough." (Jeremiah to Bicycle, 128)

There was nothing fun about riding across the country when your destination was nowhere you wanted to end up. (221)

"I've hit a wall of bad luck, and I don't know what to do about it. Is there any way I can push back when bad luck starts shoving me toward places I really, really, really don't want to go?" (Bicycle to Luck Alvarado, 234)

"I was trying to do what you want ut in the way that I want." (Bicycle to Sister Wanda, 247)

...a step-by-step theory of How to Make Someone Your Friend. I already know the first step: Say Something Nice in a Language They Understand. (261)

So she formed a second step in her friend-making theory: Listen Well to What They Say Back. (267) ( )

Recommended Ages: Gr. 5-7 (appropriate for 4, but lengthy)

Plot Summary: Bicycle lives with Sister Wanda at the Mostly Silent Monastery and is quite happy being mostly silent. She prefers the silence to the company of other kids, much to Sister Wanda's dismay. It becomes Sister Wanda's goal to have Bicycle make a friend, so much so that she decides to send Bicycle to the Friendship Factory where friendships are guaranteed. Determined to avoid the Friendship Factory, Bicycle packs her trusty bike for the most exciting adventure of her life -- a cross country bike ride. While camping her first night, she meets Griffin G. Griffin, a civil war ghost who really wants to find out if his childhood friend ever made his dream come true by opening a fried pie shop. Thankfully, his hometown is on Bicycle's way, so he haunts Clunk, keeping Bicycle company and driving her crazy. Will they make it his hometown? Will Bicycle make it to meet her idol, famous cyclist ZBig in San Francisco?

Setting: Washington DC to San Francisco

Characters:
Bicycle -
Sister Wanda - Bicycle's guardian
Clunk - bike
Brother Otto - loves food
Mr. Spim - owner of a company that encouraged his workers to ride to work and decided he should ride with them
Griffin G. Griffin - 16 y/o-ish, ghost from Civil War
Cookie Lady - offers cyclists riding through the hills cookies, gets postcards in return for her encouragement and cookie kindness
The Cannibal - horse running in the Kentucky Derby
Chef Marie - owner of the SlowDown Cafes
Jeremiah - Great-Grandson of Joe Branch (Griffin's friend)
Estrella Marquez Montgomery - Jeremiah's archenemy, owner of the pigs
Dr. Luck Alvarado - inventor, rich, disappeared and his kids are auctioning off all his belongings so they can reap the profits
Miss Money-Grubbink - woman in black staring at Bicycle at the auction

Recurring Themes: determination, perseverance, friendship, inventions, creative thinking

Controversial Issues: she rides the country alone and talks to lots of strangers

Personal Thoughts: I enjoyed this one more than I thought I would. I was worried when it started with Bicycle living at the monastery but really this book is about finding friendship and finding oneself. It was well written, and as the wife of a avid cyclist, I could relate to some of the cycling descriptions!

Genre: Fantasy

Pacing: medium - right amount of action and character development for me
Characters:
Frame:
Storyline:

Activity: ( )

Lovely juvenile fiction novel, part fantasy/part adventure genre, about an introverted orphan, uniquely named Bicycle, who leaves her guardian at the Mostly Silent Monastery in D.C. and begins a trek on her old bicycle, Clunk, to San Francisco to make friends with Zbig, a famous Polish pro-cyclist. The cross-country journey is filled with colorful characters, history, sights, life lessons and adventures. ( )