Hoover's Bride (Scholastic Bookshelf) - Softcover

Grade 3 Up?The front cover of this book is in the form of a formal wedding invitation and it invites readers to the marriage of man and machine at the swanky Dunes Hotel. How Oliver Hoover and his bride Elektra, a Vac-U-Lux model #O-U-QT vacuum cleaner, met and were married is told in amusing rhyming couplets. When Mr. Hoover finds his bride missing, he quickly takes steps to find her, but gets off the track when he meets a woman in similar distress. Her husband, a power lawn mower, is also missing. The human couple fall in love immediately, are married, and live happily ever after, she pushing a hand mower and he flitting about with a feather duster. And the machines? They are seen rusting in the city junk yard, unable to go anywhere without humans to provide the power. The moral: Humans shouldn't depend solely on machines because they can't get anywhere by themselves. The witty cartoon illustrations in watercolor, pen, and black ink are well suited to the nonsense verse. Even though the couplets don't scan perfectly, the humor carries them. This story may be outrageous for some, but it's all in fun and the moral makes it worth considering in these machine-dominated times.?Virginia Golodetz, St. Michael's College, Winooski, VT
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Ages 4^-8. This exuberantly loopy romance will delight the silly. Hoover is a bachelor whose slovenliness has led to mountainous piles of dust inside his home. Following an interior avalanche, he is reformed by the timely loan of a vacuum cleaner. In this case, cleanliness is next to amorousness, and Hoover falls head over heels in love with the gleaming machine: "Her name was Elektra. He bought her a ring --/ And he didn't buy her just any old thing. / A grapefruit-size diamond was what Hoover chose / In a size that would fit on the end of her hose." After being pronounced Man and Appliance, the two head for a honeymoon by the sea, where they encounter another mixed couple, a woman with a lawnmower for a husband. Alas, mechanical love proves fickle, as lawnmower and vacuum cleaner shortly run off with each other. But Hoover and his new lady friend soon find annulments and a more conventional life together. Family values triumph again. Leone McDermott