An eventful coming-of-age novel with vivid, relatable animal characters and the promise of more adventures to come.
A young horse and a wolf pup transcend their natural instincts to form an unlikely bond of friendship in the first of a three-part series for middle-grade readers.
When Ghost, a wild Warlander horse, and his father, Pegasus, stumble upon a dead female wolf and her litter of newborns, the young horse feels an inexplicable tie to the sole surviving pup. He persuades his father to bring him to their pasture to look after. As the little wolf, Seti, grows, he becomes Ghost’s playmate and companion, although the young horse’s parents warn him that one day “he won’t see you as a friend. He’ll see you as his prey.” A dangerous chance encounter with Seti’s father separates them, and, during their time apart, Seti lives as a junior member of his father’s pack, learning how to be a wolf. Although tragedy brings the horse and wolf back together briefly, they can’t deny their natures and their separate destinies. The link between them, however, will prove unbreakable. This action-packed and compassionate story is credited to Davis, the founder of the multiplatinum-selling New Age music group Mannheim Steamroller; the text is written by TV and YA writer Valenti (Last Night at the Monarch Motel, 2013, etc.). It pulls readers into a human-free, natural world of wild forest and pastures where the young animals grow through friendship and adversity. The tale employs a deft blend of authentic animal characteristics and humanlike thoughts and speech (the latter rendered in italics). Realistic charcoal images by Taylor effectively complement mood and action; a subtle design of hoof and paw prints running throughout the pages underscores the theme of interspecies friendship. The book also includes information about the lives and histories of real-life Warlander horses and timber wolves and a brief glossary of story-related words. In addition, there’s a 45-minute CD of “soft atmospheric effects”—rain and thunder, running water, buzzing insects, frogs, and birds—and a bit of musical pageantry and otherworldly sound effects that seem to represent the magical bond between Ghost and Seti.
An eventful coming-of-age novel with vivid, relatable animal characters and the promise of more adventures to come.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 978-0-9656909-2-8
Page Count: 107
Publisher: Mannheim Steamroller LLC
Review Posted Online: July 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
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