A Victorian-era artifact, available today in collections of the author’s works and served only partially, at best, by these...
Scratchboard illustrations add atmospheric notes to MacDonald’s enigmatic tale of two children who grow old and then young again as they journey through magical lands.
The 1867 tale is full of lyrical references to color: the titular key itself, for instance, along with a mystical rainbow shining with “shade after shade beyond the violet; while before the red stood a color more gorgeous and mysterious still,” and hummingbird-feathered fish that swim through the air and are transformed (when eaten, a weirdly macabre touch) to tiny angels that “throw off a continuous shower of sparks of all colors.” Rather than try to capture these, Sanderson chooses to use a medium best suited to conveying the story’s likewise significant themes of light and shadow. But for all the expertly modeled hair, faces, and foliage in her art, the rainbow, when it does appear, looks like a monochromatic sunbeam, and shadows in some scenes are obtrusively heavy. The story's metaphors are murky where the illustrations are not, though, and that, along with the ritualistic tone, will likely leave young readers in the dark. Jane Yolen adds a biographical sketch of the author; her critical reflections on different ways of reading the strange miniodyssey only underscore its obscurity.
A Victorian-era artifact, available today in collections of the author’s works and served only partially, at best, by these new illustrations. (Illustrated short story. 9-11, adult)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8028-5456-8
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Eerdmans
Review Posted Online: Aug. 1, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
However the compelling fitness of theme and event and the apt but unexpected imagery (the opening sentences compare the...
At a time when death has become an acceptable, even voguish subject in children's fiction, Natalie Babbitt comes through with a stylistic gem about living forever.
Protected Winnie, the ten-year-old heroine, is not immortal, but when she comes upon young Jesse Tuck drinking from a secret spring in her parents' woods, she finds herself involved with a family who, having innocently drunk the same water some 87 years earlier, haven't aged a moment since. Though the mood is delicate, there is no lack of action, with the Tucks (previously suspected of witchcraft) now pursued for kidnapping Winnie; Mae Tuck, the middle aged mother, striking and killing a stranger who is onto their secret and would sell the water; and Winnie taking Mae's place in prison so that the Tucks can get away before she is hanged from the neck until....? Though Babbitt makes the family a sad one, most of their reasons for discontent are circumstantial and there isn't a great deal of wisdom to be gleaned from their fate or Winnie's decision not to share it.
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1975
ISBN: 0312369816
Page Count: 164
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: April 13, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1975
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
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