Dicey learned early that hard work is essential to maintaining independence; now, at 21, she pursues a vocational goal so relentlessly that she imperils all she holds most dear—in this somber conclusion to the Tillerman cycle. Jeff wants to marry Dicey, soon; Dicey loves him deeply and for the right reasons, but puts him off: she has dropped out of school hoping to support herself—and the family—by building boats. Though she has worked diligently for a nest egg and lovingly reclaimed a collection of old tools in preparation, she is underfunded and—worse—unprepared in more essential ways. When the tools are stolen, she learns she should have been insured; she loses her only order because she lacks a contract; instead of actually building, she takes on the grueling task of painting 30 poorly made rowboats in order to meet expenses. Meanwhile, an enigmatic, silver-tongued drifter helps Dicey understand how narrow she has become and pitches in with the work—for which he finally exacts his own bitter price; and Dicey is so absorbed that she ignores Jeff for weeks and doesn't notice that Gran is seriously ill until it is almost too late. No one who loves the Tillermans—whose joys and troubles are as compelling as ever—will want to miss this. As a novel on its own, driven though Dicey is, it is more than a cautionary tale about a workaholic; the brothers' and sisters' experiences are richly textured and carefully interrelated, with Maybeth's failure/success especially telling in contrast to Dicey's. Dicey's flight from marriage may seem insufficiently explained by her yen to build, but might in fact have been predicted from her parents' traumatic relationship. Dicey's union with Jeff has been long foreseen; here, their coming together seems less inevitable and sadly bleak. Still, with her usual skill, Voigt convinces us that this is the way it would be.
Pub Date: April 1, 1989
ISBN: 0689851332
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Atheneum
Review Posted Online: Oct. 27, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1989
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
Renata’s wren encounter proves magical, one most children could only wish to experience outside of this lovely story.
A home-renovation project is interrupted by a family of wrens, allowing a young girl an up-close glimpse of nature.
Renata and her father enjoy working on upgrading their bathroom, installing a clawfoot bathtub, and cutting a space for a new window. One warm night, after Papi leaves the window space open, two wrens begin making a nest in the bathroom. Rather than seeing it as an unfortunate delay of their project, Renata and Papi decide to let the avian carpenters continue their work. Renata witnesses the birth of four chicks as their rosy eggs split open “like coats that are suddenly too small.” Renata finds at a crucial moment that she can help the chicks learn to fly, even with the bittersweet knowledge that it will only hasten their exits from her life. Rosen uses lively language and well-chosen details to move the story of the baby birds forward. The text suggests the strong bond built by this Afro-Latinx father and daughter with their ongoing project without needing to point it out explicitly, a light touch in a picture book full of delicate, well-drawn moments and precise wording. Garoche’s drawings are impressively detailed, from the nest’s many small bits to the developing first feathers on the chicks and the wall smudges and exposed wiring of the renovation. (This book was reviewed digitally with 10-by-20-inch double-page spreads viewed at actual size.)
Renata’s wren encounter proves magical, one most children could only wish to experience outside of this lovely story. (Picture book. 3-7)Pub Date: March 16, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-593-12320-1
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Schwartz & Wade/Random
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2021
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