Jeff Greenaway Books
From the author of World Made by Hand, The Witch of Hebron and Long Emergency comes this wonderful story of youth, misunderstanding, adventure and love. A perfect parable for the holiday season.
From WATER STREET PRESS A children's story for grown-ups. "...amongst their own kind, children are the world's most thoroughgoing skeptics." But not eleven-year-old Jeff Greenaway. When his parents suddenly come into possession of hard-to-get tickets to the smash musical How To Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, but can't find a babysitter, Jeff ventures out in the Manhattan night to meet his hero, Count Zackuloff, the mad, moldy host of Channel 5's Midnight Mystery Theater, a horror movie program. Amazingly, the Count takes Jeff along on a publicity stunt in costume to the Horn and Hardart Automat, drawing crowds of curious fans. Next, the Count takes Jeff to a double feature horror matinee at the 58th Street Translux. An unusual friendship develops between the boy and the ghoul. Through it all, Jeff nutures dreams of becoming the Count's on-screen sidekick. But the Count has his own dreams-and they do not include a lifetime of introducing old horror movies on a third-rate New York TV station. James Howard Kunstler's charming tale takes us back to an age when New York City was a natural playground for a little boy and his own, personal vampire hero-a time when it seemed possible that all of our dreams could come true.
From WATER STREET PRESS President Kennedy is entertaining some now-forgotten head-of-state in the White House and eleven-year-old Jeff Greenaway and his best friend Bobby Schindler are in New York City entertaining themselves-tossing water balloons, pennies and one Spanish melon off the fifteenth-floor terrace of the Schindler's apartment building over looking Fifth Avenue. Bobby's cat, Mehetabel, wanders out to sun herself and-inspired by the blustery day-the boys decide to fashion a parachute of Mrs. Schindler's pink damask tablecloth and send Mehetabel for a twelve-foot sail from the balcony of the water tower to the terrace. The phlegmatic Mehetabel cooperates like a flight cadet as they fit her with the parachute, but the wind is unpredictable and the experiment goes awry. Mehetabel takes flight over Central Park with the boys-along with a Park Avenue matron, a couple of winos, a retired veterinarian and the New York City Fire Department-in hot pursuit. James Howard Kunstler's charming tale takes us back to an age when NYC was a natural playground for two little boys on a breezy afternoon, a native would lend you a dime to make a phone call, and cats could fly. The Flight of Mehetabel is the third in Mr. Kunstler's series of children's books for adults. Collect all of his enchanting Jeff Greenaway tales at www.waterstreetpressbooks.com.
This fifth installment of the Jeff Greenaway novella series finds our eleven-year-old hero shipped off from Manhattan for the summer (as usual) to Camp Timahoe, near the town of Lost Indian, Vermont, in the summer of 1963. All seems normal at first with Ahab the Arab playing all over the radio. But the camp seems to be mysteriously going to pieces. One by one, the counselors have disappeared until none are left… and the boys are on their own….
A comical tale, in a continuing series, about an eleven-year-old boy growing up in New York City in the early 1960s. In this installment, young Jeff Greenaway is sent away to Ponsonby Hall, a boarding school for screw-ups deep in the New Hampshire woods. He is soon set upon by a bullying gang of the oldest boys who call themselves the Ancients. It appears that they actually run the joint. Not even old Doc Stilgoe, Ponsy's headmaster, can help him. A triumph of style and humorous story-telling.