This teen gossip columnist's fiction debut floats like a bubble in the breeze, despite plenty of traumatic events and sibling conflict. Off to Italy for ten days with little brother Matt and parents Marc and Miranda, Melanie fills up her diary with details of the long flight and subsequent jetlag. Encounters with new people (“Almost everyone here speaks Italian—even kids”) and food, visits to famous places (“The Leaning Tower of Pisa is soooo cooool”), family squabbles, and a chain of calamities, from running into one of her father's old flames on her parents’ anniversary and having to search—twice—for a missing Matt, to having a wallet stolen and needing a quick trip to the emergency room after a fall. All's well that ends well, heigh ho; Melanie returns to the States with new tastes for gelato and parmesan cheese, a greater willingness to appreciate people—even dorky classmate Norbert—and an unaffected poem that sums up her experiences. Sprinkled with exclamation points, pronounced Italian words (“piazza (Pee Ot Za)” etc) and small drawings, Melanie's journal will tease fans of the Eloise sequels and like travelogues into further armchair adventuring. (Fiction. 9-11)
Pub Date: May 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-375-80509-5
Page Count: 144
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2000
A fizzy mix of low humor and brisk action, with promise of more of both to come.
Heroic deeds await Isaac after his little sister runs into the school basement and is captured by elves.
Even though their school is a spooky old castle transplanted stone by stone from Germany, Isaac and his two friends, Max and Emma, little suspect that an entire magical kingdom lies beneath—a kingdom run by elves, policed by oversized rats in uniform, and populated by captives who start out human but undergo transformative “weirding.” These revelations await Isaac and sidekicks as they nerve themselves to trail his bossy younger sib, Lily, through a shadowy storeroom and into a tunnel, across a wide lake, and into a city lit by half-human fireflies, where they are cast together into a dungeon. Can they escape before they themselves start changing? Gibson pits his doughty rescuers against such adversaries as an elven monarch who emits truly kingly belches and a once-human jailer with a self-picking nose. Tests of mettle range from a riddle contest to a face-off with the menacing head rat Shelfliver, and a helter-skelter chase finally leads rescuers and rescued back to the aboveground. Plainly, though, there is further rescuing to be done.
A fizzy mix of low humor and brisk action, with promise of more of both to come. (Fantasy. 9-11)Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-62370-255-7
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Capstone Young Readers
Review Posted Online: June 28, 2015
There is something profoundly elemental going on in Smalls’s book: the capturing of a moment of unmediated joy. It’s not melodramatic, but just a Saturday in which an African-American father and son immerse themselves in each other’s company when the woman of the house is away. Putting first things first, they tidy up the house, with an unheralded sense of purpose motivating their actions: “Then we clean, clean, clean the windows,/wipe, wipe, wash them right./My dad shines in the windows’ light.” When their work is done, they head for the park for some batting practice, then to the movies where the boy gets to choose between films. After a snack, they work their way homeward, racing each other, doing a dance step or two, then “Dad takes my hand and slows down./I understand, and we slow down./It’s a long, long walk./We have a quiet talk and smile.” Smalls treats the material without pretense, leaving it guileless and thus accessible to readers. Hays’s artwork is wistful and idyllic, just as this day is for one small boy. (Picture book. 5-8)
Pub Date: April 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-316-79899-1
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1999
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