Fourteen-year-old Emily Shepherd’s life has just gotten better: she and her family have moved away from the school where Emily was ostracized for a facial scar sustained many years ago. She has since undergone corrective surgery and is eager for a fresh start in a place where no one knows her secret. Her family’s recently purchased Victorian is the perfect place to begin this new life. One of the house’s many charms is an elaborate treehouse in the backyard. There, Emily meets Rowan, a neighbor with a secret of her own. In the two teens and their families, Thesman creates highly contrasting characters. The Shepherds are a loud and loving stepfamily. Emily gets along with her mother and says about her stepfather: “My luckiest day was the day Mom married him.” How refreshing! By contrast, Rowan’s father is difficult and demanding, her mother distant and emotionally uninvolved. While Thesman only hints at spousal abuse, at the very least Rowan is not living in a happy, healthy home. Emily and Rowan become friends and discover that they each have something to offer the other: whereas Emily is practical and straightforward, Rowan has a terrific imagination that manifests itself in marvelous wood carvings that decorate the tree house. Emily’s influence on Rowan proves to be quite dramatic, giving Rowan the push she needs to rebel against her father. With only a handful of characters and one main setting, Thesman has crafted a subtle, quiet story of friendship and family dynamics. Emily and Rowan are wonderful characters, and the resolution both girls come to is satisfying. A great read, sure to appeal to middle-school readers. (Fiction. 10-12)
Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-670-89288-2
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2000
Themes of freedom and responsibility twine between the lines of this short but heavy novel from the author of Because of Winn-Dixie (2000). Three months after his mother's death, Rob and his father are living in a small-town Florida motel, each nursing sharp, private pain. On the same day Rob has two astonishing encounters: first, he stumbles upon a caged tiger in the woods behind the motel; then he meets Sistine, a new classmate responding to her parents' breakup with ready fists and a big chip on her shoulder. About to burst with his secret, Rob confides in Sistine, who instantly declares that the tiger must be freed. As Rob quickly develops a yen for Sistine's company that gives her plenty of emotional leverage, and the keys to the cage almost literally drop into his hands, credible plotting plainly takes a back seat to character delineation here. And both struggle for visibility beneath a wagonload of symbol and metaphor: the real tiger (and the inevitable recitation of Blake's poem); the cage; Rob's dream of Sistine riding away on the beast's back; a mysterious skin condition on Rob's legs that develops after his mother's death; a series of wooden figurines that he whittles; a larger-than-life African-American housekeeper at the motel who dispenses wisdom with nearly every utterance; and the climax itself, which is signaled from the start. It's all so freighted with layers of significance that, like Lois Lowry's Gathering Blue (2000), Anne Mazer's Oxboy (1995), or, further back, Julia Cunningham's Dorp Dead (1965), it becomes more an exercise in analysis than a living, breathing story. Still, the tiger, "burning bright" with magnificent, feral presence, does make an arresting central image. (Fiction. 10-12)
Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-7636-0911-0
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2001
BOOK TO SCREEN
Bishop’s spectacular photographs of the tiny red-eyed tree frog defeat an incidental text from Cowley (Singing Down the Rain, 1997, etc.). The frog, only two inches long, is enormous in this title; it appears along with other nocturnal residents of the rain forests of Central America, including the iguana, ant, katydid, caterpillar, and moth. In a final section, Cowley explains how small the frog is and aspects of its life cycle. The main text, however, is an afterthought to dramatic events in the photos, e.g., “But the red-eyed tree frog has been asleep all day. It wakes up hungry. What will it eat? Here is an iguana. Frogs do not eat iguanas.” Accompanying an astonishing photograph of the tree frog leaping away from a boa snake are three lines (“The snake flicks its tongue. It tastes frog in the air. Look out, frog!”) that neither advance nor complement the action. The layout employs pale and deep green pages and typeface, and large jewel-like photographs in which green and red dominate. The combination of such visually sophisticated pages and simplistic captions make this a top-heavy, unsatisfying title. (Picture book. 7-9)
Pub Date: March 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-590-87175-7
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1999
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