Junior Blossom has finally created the ultimate invention--the Green Phantom. It's big, black, Day-Glo green, and it's beautiful! All it needs is the secret ingredient. The whole family makes a promise to ensure that Junior's invention will be a success, a Blossom promise that can never be broken. Family and friends gather to launch the Green Phantom, but where are Pap and his dog, Mud? They wouldn't break a Blossom promise unless they were in serious trouble....
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”Byars develops her story subtly, using shifting points of view to delineate her characters. Each chapter leads logically and simply into the next; yet by the end of the story readers understand several different viewpoints and have followed a subplot involving Pap, Mud, and an abandoned puppy. This is no small accomplishment for independent readers in fourth or fifth grade and is excellent preparation for more complex reading. The Blossoms are totally real and believable, yet quirky enough to be fun…This is a story about love in its many forms. Like Byars’ best, it is rock solid and full of chuckles, and it lingers in the mind.”
— School Library Journal
“As always, Byars gives a kaleidoscope of points of view, entering with equal skill into the mind of an elderly man, a lovesick boy, a thwarted inventor, and a sulking dog. As always, humor and heartbreak are never far apart, and readers cry through their laughter and smile through their tears. In her body of work, Byars has produced some of the ‘the most beautiful, the most wonderful, the most spectacular’ middle-grade fiction the world of children’s literature has ever seen.”
— Children’s Literature" Old Children's Book. Liked it as a kid, but haven't read it in years. "
— Patrick, 8/10/2010" Pretty much the same as her other books about this family. (I can't remember their name, but you get the idea :P) "
— Elizabeth, 1/30/2010" Old Children's Book. Liked it as a kid, but haven't read it in years. "
— Patrick, 2/4/2009" Pretty much the same as her other books about this family. (I can't remember their name, but you get the idea :P) "
— Elizabeth, 8/8/2008Betsy Byars, a native of Charlotte, North Carolina, received a degree in English from Queens College there. She is the author of the Blossom Family series and several other books. She lives in Clemson, South Carolina, with her husband, a college professor. They have four grown children—one son and three daughters—and five grandchildren.
Blain Fairman is a published author and a narrator of children’s books. Some of his narrated works include A Blossom Promise, Blossoms Meet the Vulture Lady, The Notjustanybody Family, and Tarot Says Beware: A Herculeah Jones Mystery.