This genuine and energetic, if hapless, antiheroic hero grows on you.
Iggy’s intrepid and clever selflessness is open to misinterpretation.
This installment in the chronicles of 9-year-old Iggy Frangi’s (Iggy Is Better Than Ever, 2020, etc.) encounters with unintended consequences examines intent as an element crucial to gallantry. After learning of a break-in at the Heckies’ house nearby, Iggy has a plan for thwarting the potential theft of his best Halloween candy, along with his family’s other valuables. It’s pretty simple: Set a decoy and dig a trap. It’s hardly Iggy’s fault when annoying 7-year-old Rudy Heckie is injured during the trap construction. (No, Rudy’s finger is not severed.) Nor is it Iggy’s fault that Mr. Heckie hurts his tailbone when he trips over Rudy and falls into the trap dug with the shovel that didn’t sever Rudy’s finger. The pace and energy of Barrows’ narrative matches Iggy’s focused enthusiasm for his (somewhat ill-conceived) plan. The apologist narrator, very much on Team Iggy, provides evidence that points to Iggy’s heroism. Ricks’ cartoon illustrations are a lively and hilarious complement to Iggy’s thoughts and experiences. In them, Iggy, his family, and the Heckies appear White. Iggy’s charm is substantial, so blithely optimistic are his intentions and so singular (yet familiar to any well-meaning human) his way of seeing the world. Iggy’s ideas are clear to him—it’s everyone else who ends up asking, “What were you thinking?”
This genuine and energetic, if hapless, antiheroic hero grows on you. (Fiction. 8-11)Pub Date: May 4, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-984813-36-7
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: March 30, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2021
However the compelling fitness of theme and event and the apt but unexpected imagery (the opening sentences compare the...
At a time when death has become an acceptable, even voguish subject in children's fiction, Natalie Babbitt comes through with a stylistic gem about living forever.
Protected Winnie, the ten-year-old heroine, is not immortal, but when she comes upon young Jesse Tuck drinking from a secret spring in her parents' woods, she finds herself involved with a family who, having innocently drunk the same water some 87 years earlier, haven't aged a moment since. Though the mood is delicate, there is no lack of action, with the Tucks (previously suspected of witchcraft) now pursued for kidnapping Winnie; Mae Tuck, the middle aged mother, striking and killing a stranger who is onto their secret and would sell the water; and Winnie taking Mae's place in prison so that the Tucks can get away before she is hanged from the neck until....? Though Babbitt makes the family a sad one, most of their reasons for discontent are circumstantial and there isn't a great deal of wisdom to be gleaned from their fate or Winnie's decision not to share it.
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1975
ISBN: 0312369816
Page Count: 164
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: April 13, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1975
Medically, both squicky and hopeful; emotionally, unbelievably squeaky-clean.
A 12-year-old copes with a brain tumor.
Maddie likes potatoes and fake mustaches. Kids at school are nice (except one whom readers will see instantly is a bully); soon they’ll get to perform Shakespeare scenes in a unit they’ve all been looking forward to. But recent dysfunctions in Maddie’s arm and leg mean, stunningly, that she has a brain tumor. She has two surgeries, the first successful, the second taking place after the book’s end, leaving readers hanging. The tumor’s not malignant, but it—or the surgeries—could cause sight loss, personality change, or death. The descriptions of surgery aren’t for the faint of heart. The authors—parents of a real-life Maddie who really had a brain tumor—imbue fictional Maddie’s first-person narration with quirky turns of phrase (“For the love of potatoes!”) and whimsy (she imagines her medical battles as epic fantasy fights and pretends MRI stands for Mustard Rat from Indiana or Mustaches Rock Importantly), but they also portray her as a model sick kid. She’s frightened but never acts out, snaps, or resists. Her most frequent commentary about the tumor, having her skull opened, and the possibility of death is “Boo” or “Super boo.” She even shoulders the bully’s redemption. Maddie and most characters are white; one cringe-inducing hallucinatory surgery dream involves “chanting island natives” and a “witch doctor lady.”
Medically, both squicky and hopeful; emotionally, unbelievably squeaky-clean. (authors’ note, discussion questions) (Fiction. 9-11)Pub Date: Oct. 3, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-62972-330-3
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Shadow Mountain
Review Posted Online: Aug. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2017
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