Despite some wooden writing, Martin succeeds here by illuminating the fraught family relationships strained by separation,...
Martin continues the multigenerational saga begun in Better to Wish (2013) with this second entry, spanning the years 1955-1971.
The spotlight is on Abby, Zander and their children. Twins Dana and Julia are 7 at the outset; their 4-year-old brother, Peter, has Down syndrome. Abby’s accepted her role as mother, homemaker (in a large New York town house) and wife to now-famous author Zander Burley. Dana’s enthralled with her father and resents her mother’s disapproval of his drinking. When alcohol fuels Zander’s death by drowning, the Burleys’ world cracks open. Martin focuses on Dana’s maturation against a glum backdrop of worsening finances (sister Nell is born five months after Zander’s death) and multiple moves and new schools in New York and finally, back to Abby’s home turf, Maine. An artist like her father, Dana is alone within her family. Released to live with her aunt in Manhattan, she flourishes at an arts high school. Abby’s subsequent remarriage, a scary bout of meningitis for Julia and desultory family flares all happen rapid-fire, in chapters that bridge years and weave in (somewhat clumsily) historical events of the 1960s, ending with Dana poised for adulthood.
Despite some wooden writing, Martin succeeds here by illuminating the fraught family relationships strained by separation, financial stress and individual aspiration. (Historical fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-545-35943-6
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Sept. 17, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Readers can still rely on this series to bring laughs.
The Heffley family’s house undergoes a disastrous attempt at home improvement.
When Great Aunt Reba dies, she leaves some money to the family. Greg’s mom calls a family meeting to determine what to do with their share, proposing home improvements and then overruling the family’s cartoonish wish lists and instead pushing for an addition to the kitchen. Before bringing in the construction crew, the Heffleys attempt to do minor maintenance and repairs themselves—during which Greg fails at the work in various slapstick scenes. Once the professionals are brought in, the problems keep getting worse: angry neighbors, terrifying problems in walls, and—most serious—civil permitting issues that put the kibosh on what work’s been done. Left with only enough inheritance to patch and repair the exterior of the house—and with the school’s dismal standardized test scores as a final straw—Greg’s mom steers the family toward moving, opening up house-hunting and house-selling storylines (and devastating loyal Rowley, who doesn’t want to lose his best friend). While Greg’s positive about the move, he’s not completely uncaring about Rowley’s action. (And of course, Greg himself is not as unaffected as he wishes.) The gags include effectively placed callbacks to seemingly incidental events (the “stress lizard” brought in on testing day is particularly funny) and a lampoon of after-school-special–style problem books. Just when it seems that the Heffleys really will move, a new sequence of chaotic trouble and property destruction heralds a return to the status quo. Whew.
Readers can still rely on this series to bring laughs. (Graphic/fiction hybrid. 8-12)Pub Date: Nov. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4197-3903-3
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Amulet/Abrams
Review Posted Online: Nov. 18, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
The three way chats, in which they are joined by other animals, about web spinning, themselves, other humans—are as often...
A successful juvenile by the beloved New Yorker writer portrays a farm episode with an imaginative twist that makes a poignant, humorous story of a pig, a spider and a little girl.
Young Fern Arable pleads for the life of runt piglet Wilbur and gets her father to sell him to a neighbor, Mr. Zuckerman. Daily, Fern visits the Zuckermans to sit and muse with Wilbur and with the clever pen spider Charlotte, who befriends him when he is lonely and downcast. At the news of Wilbur's forthcoming slaughter, campaigning Charlotte, to the astonishment of people for miles around, spins words in her web. "Some Pig" comes first. Then "Terrific"—then "Radiant". The last word, when Wilbur is about to win a show prize and Charlotte is about to die from building her egg sac, is "Humble". And as the wonderful Charlotte does die, the sadness is tempered by the promise of more spiders next spring.
The three way chats, in which they are joined by other animals, about web spinning, themselves, other humans—are as often informative as amusing, and the whole tenor of appealing wit and pathos will make fine entertainment for reading aloud, too.Pub Date: Oct. 15, 1952
ISBN: 978-0-06-026385-0
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1952
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
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