Fleabrain Loves Franny by Joanne Rocklin

Fleabrain Loves Franny by Joanne Rocklin. Amulet Books, 2015. 268 pages.

Reading Level: Middle Grades, ages 8-10
Recommended for: ages 8-12

Bottom Line: After Franny is stricken with polio, an erudite flea becomes her best friend in this quirky fantasy for middle-grade readers.

During the summer of 1952, 10-year-old Franny Katzenback became a statistic: one of the 58,000 people, many of them children, stricken by polio. The worst of it, thankfully, she can barely remember, such as days of delirium and weeks inside an iron lung. What she remembers best is that one of the nuns at the hospital read the best book ever to her. Charlotte’s Web is brand-new, and to Franny It’s about everything important: birth and death and love and the glory of everything. After leaving the hospital, Franny reads her own copy over and over until it’s like a new friend. Her only friend, in fact—all the kids in her Pittsburgh neighborhood stay at shouting distance because they believe the polio is still infectious (even though it isn’t). But one day, she finds a scrap of paper in a dust ball on her bed—odd! Even odder, the scrap of paper contains a note, written to her in tiny letters in brownish ink. The writer is very small. The writer, in fact, is a flea who’s made his home on the tail of Franny’s dog, Alf. He calls himself Fleabrain, he is extremely knowledgeable (having read all the classics on the Katzenback bookshelves), and he has been searching for someone like Franny all his life. Needless to say, girl and flea become fast friends.

Like most friends, they occasionally disagree, and their most serious disagreement is on the literary value of Charlotte’s Web. When Fleabrain eventually comes around on that subject, it may just be to please Franny, with whom he’s developed an almost codependent relationship. The relationship becomes a problem: Franny is at first dependent on Fleabrain to broaden her horizons (he’s a flea, remember), take her on imaginary journeys, and do something about the over-zealous Nurse Olivegarten. But fantasy comes to seem insufficient, as it should. Franny hankers for her old human friends, and Fleabrain comes to realize that as she gets well, he will lose her. But perhaps, he decides, it’s for the best. The “glory of everything” is made up of an infinite number of tiny particles—it’s bottom-up, rather than top-down. (Christians believe just the opposite, which might be worth pointing out if you read this book aloud.) The prose is charming and full of surprises and the characters are believable—even in Fleabrain you recognize qualities that endear and exasperate. The ending, however, left this reader wondering what their friendship was all about.

Cautions: None

Overall rating: 4 (out of 5)

• Worldview/moral value: 3.5
• Artistic value: 4

Categories: Middle Grades, Fantasy, Historical Fiction, Life Issues, Character Values