A wild, unique fairy tale.
A girl untangles family curses that cause desertion and bitterness—and transformation into beasts.
Thirteen-year-old Sarah’s life has always been unsettled; her parents move their three-person family often, always “sun-chasing” to avoid cold. One night Sarah’s mother tells her father that she’s leaving. The reasons that Sarah overhears are cryptic, and suddenly her mother’s gone. Sarah and Dad manage, barely (he forgets to shop for groceries, so it’s just peanut-butter sandwiches), and she’s distracted by an improbable teenage boy named Alan she meets in the nearby Not-a-Forest. But Dad’s changing. His wrists are hairier, his teeth lengthen, and he eats meat raw. Without explanation, he abruptly drops Sarah off at a damp, moldy castle with grandparents she never knew existed. Her grandfather’s a clawed, furred beast that seems to be an amalgam of bear, wolf and lion, and he’s caged. As Sarah confronts her family’s curses and the curses’ obscure terms, Hellisen’s narration is thoughtful and lyrical. Figurative prose is memorable yet never flashy: “The words fell out onto the table and flew away like dandelion seeds, never reaching him”; “a fiddlehead of apprehension unfurled in her chest.” Sarah’s hearing and smell sharpen; she races through forest and snow. “Beauty and the Beast” shimmers faintly underneath this story, but slant; the meanings here are multiple and surprisingly subtle.
A wild, unique fairy tale. (Fantasy. 10-14)Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-8050-9980-5
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
Despite the stale fat-to-curvy pattern, compelling world building with a Southern European, pseudo-Christian feel,...
Adventure drags our heroine all over the map of fantasyland while giving her the opportunity to use her smarts.
Elisa—Princess Lucero-Elisa de Riqueza of Orovalle—has been chosen for Service since the day she was born, when a beam of holy light put a Godstone in her navel. She's a devout reader of holy books and is well-versed in the military strategy text Belleza Guerra, but she has been kept in ignorance of world affairs. With no warning, this fat, self-loathing princess is married off to a distant king and is embroiled in political and spiritual intrigue. War is coming, and perhaps only Elisa's Godstone—and knowledge from the Belleza Guerra—can save them. Elisa uses her untried strategic knowledge to always-good effect. With a character so smart that she doesn't have much to learn, body size is stereotypically substituted for character development. Elisa’s "mountainous" body shrivels away when she spends a month on forced march eating rat, and thus she is a better person. Still, it's wonderfully refreshing to see a heroine using her brain to win a war rather than strapping on a sword and charging into battle.
Despite the stale fat-to-curvy pattern, compelling world building with a Southern European, pseudo-Christian feel, reminiscent of Naomi Kritzer's Fires of the Faithful (2002), keeps this entry fresh. (Fantasy. 12-14)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-06-202648-4
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Greenwillow Books
Review Posted Online: July 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2011
A satisfying story of family, friendship and small-town cooperation in a 21st-century world.
Sent to stay with octogenarian relatives for the summer, 14-year-old Mike ends up coordinating a community drive to raise $40,000 for the adoption of a Romanian orphan. He’ll never be his dad's kind of engineer, but he learns he’s great at human engineering.
Mike’s math learning disability is matched by his widower father's lack of social competence; the Giant Genius can’t even reliably remember his son’s name. Like many of the folks the boy comes to know in Do Over, Penn.—his great-uncle Poppy silent in his chair, the multiply pierced-and-tattooed Gladys from the bank and “a homeless guy” who calls himself Past—Mike feels like a failure. But in spite of his own lack of confidence, he provides the kick start they need to cope with their losses and contribute to the campaign. Using the Internet (especially YouTube), Mike makes use of town talents and his own webpage design skills and entrepreneurial imagination. Math-definition chapter headings (Compatible Numbers, Zero Property, Tessellations) turn out to apply well to human actions in this well-paced, first-person narrative. Erskine described Asperger’s syndrome from the inside in Mockingbird (2010). Here, it’s a likely cause for the rift between father and son touchingly mended at the novel's cinematic conclusion.
A satisfying story of family, friendship and small-town cooperation in a 21st-century world. (Fiction. 10-14)Pub Date: June 9, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-399-25505-2
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Philomel
Review Posted Online: April 18, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2011
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