This is more of a biography of the author of Moxietown than a review of the book.

Little Jimmy told his parents that he was going to be rich and famous.  He said, "Father, you do not have to worry about money.  I will make sure your last years are prosperous."  Little Jimmy's father said, "Don't let me down."  Little Jimmy began to get scared.  "What if I don't become a famous rich person," he thought, “I don’t want to let Pop Pop down.”  He then put his head in between his mattress and bed frame and stayed that way until dinner.  At dinner Little Jimmy's father asked, "Are you famous yet?" Little Jimmy bowed his head and didn’t say anything. His father said, “Looks like I have to go to work tomorrow.” The studio audience roared. Little Jimmy’s mother dropped the casserole on the cat. The audience couldn’t stop laughing. The soundboard made the cat meow like a baby who had a pot of boiling water dumped on its head. It wasn’t a meow at all. The meow took over the cat’s whole face. It opened its mouth wider than someone trying to fit the skull of a baby goat in their mouth. Casserole oozed down the cat’s throat. Jimmy’s mother tried to save the cat, but it had already drowned. The studio audience stopped laughing. There were tiny cries in the corner. “What’s that?” asked Little Jimmy. It was a litter of kittens in a basket. The studio audience said, “Ahhhh…”

Little Jimmy really wanted to be famous. He wanted to be famous so bad that at school sometimes he would punch kids in the stomach, but then he would feel bad and tell the kids about all the new kittens he had and that if it would make their stomach feel better they could come over and pick one out. Soon all the kittens were gone except one that was brown and weak and ugly. Little Jimmy decided to call it Moxie.

When Little Jimmy was really tiny he didn’t know what a wheel barrow was. There was one upside down in his neighbor’s yard. He kicked it. It didn’t do anything. He put Moxie on top of it and spun the tire. It spun. Moxie turned its head sideways. He spun the tire more and more. He said, “Hey Moxie isn’t this fun?”

Once little Jimmy walked by a piano store and thought, "I'd like to be a world renown pianist.”  Then he walked past a toy store and saw a ray gun and bought it and decided he would protect humanity. Moxie would be his sidekick.

Little Jimmy ate everything. He did not eat his cat Moxie. He ate everything else.  He traded all his baseball cards for pudding at school.  Then when he was older he blamed his mother for all his lost cards and said she must have thrown them away.  One night when little Jimmy wasn’t so little he ran all the way home from Burger King, where he worked at the time, three towns over and demanded to know why she had thrown away all his cards.  "If you hadn't done that I would have never had to work this crappy job."

Little Jimmy then cried because he wasn't famous yet. He remembered Moxie’s mother and then little Jimmy remembered how his mother had dumped casserole on Moxie’s mother’s head. This made him very sad.

He quit the Burger King job and looked up to the sky and said, “God, will you make me famous?” For three years he waited for God to make him famous. God did not make him famous. He put little Jimmy in Indiana, but he did not make him famous. Little Jimmy was bigger now. No one called him little Jimmy anymore. They called him big Jim. Big Jim left Indiana and went home. When he got home he asked his mother where his baseball cards were. And she said there was bad news. “While you were away,” she said, “Moxie got sick.” Big Jim’s father yelled from the living room. It was tough to understand what he said. Subtitles at the bottom of the screen said he asked if Big Jim was famous yet. Then Big Jim’s father yelled something else. A laugh track sounded. The studio audience had been replaced. And then the curtains closed and a man walked up to Big Jim’s family and said, “Little Jimmy, I’m afraid the studio has decided to shutdown the show. I’m sorry.”

Big Jim didn’t care. He wasn’t cut out for television.

He decided he would write a book. That would be his path to fame. He would write a book about his cat or maybe he would write a book about something else and dedicate the book to his cat or maybe he would get a tattoo of his cat on his chest and wait for the studio to call for a reunion show.