A Girl Named Zippy Growing Up Small in Mooreland, Indiana by Haven Kimmel

A Girl Named Zippy Growing Up Small in Mooreland, Indiana by Haven Kimmel is the first memoir that I have ever read. 

The definition of memoir is a story about a life, but is told in the structure of a story with different events of a person’s life. In memoir, there are turning points from the author’s life. These stories are told in first person. Not to be confused with autobiography, which tells the story about a life. Memoir could be referred to as a “memoirist.”  

In A Girl Named Zippy Growing Up Small in Mooreland, Indiana, the main character, Haven Kimmel, goes by the nickname Zippy. 

This story begins in 1965, in the small rural city, Mooreland, Indiana with Zippy, recalling how very small the city was in 1965. Her family dynamics is quite common for the 1960s, a mom, a dad, and two older siblings, a sister and brother and her being the youngest.

Throughout the book, we meet her best friend, Julie, who she has known all of her life. We meet the interesting neighbours of Mooreland.

From the moment one starts reading this story Zippy takes us through many different events from Meeting on First Day,[1] at The Quaker meeting house. To grammar school and the first time, she met a person like Dana, who wore a black leather biker jacket.

Young adults and adults will be able to relate to A Girl Named Zippy Growing Up Small in Mooreland, Indiana by Haven Kimmel because she has characters that everyone can relate too or have known in their own lives. 

I recommend everyone to read A Girl Named Zippy Growing Up Small in Mooreland, Indiana by Haven Kimmel because she weaves events of her life into a dazzling story that will keep one wanting to read more.

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[1] Quakers use numbers for the days and months because it is part of plain speech. It also separates Quakers from the wider ‘world,’ and rejects the pagan and Roman association (Pink Dandelion. An Introduction To Quakerism. Cambridge: Cambridge Press, 2007. 26).