Smoothly written but not cohesive or memorable. (Historical fiction. 8-12)
When her mother falls into a catatonic depression, 12-year-old Ellen finds herself whisked from lively Baltimore to an obscure Blue Ridge mountain.
It’s 1942, and Ellen’s daddy is off fighting in the war and Mama’s hit one of her sad spells. Unable to cope, Ellen summons Mama’s forbidding spinster sister, Pearl, who takes them both back to Virginia to live with her. There, Aunt Pearl tends to Mama while Ellen attends a one-room schoolhouse. One boy, a nearly illiterate 15-year-old named Russell, rarely comes to school, and when he does he smells strongly of the skunks he traps. When Aunt Pearl sends Ellen to Russell’s house with food, she meets Russell’s abused mother, a childhood friend of her mother’s, and his abusive father. An odd friendship develops, in which Russell shows Ellen some of the beauties of the mountain forest, and she tutors him in reading and math. Meanwhile, Russell’s mother tries to help Ellen’s mother heal. Told from Ellen’s first-person point of view, the novel has good sentence-level writing but falls short in two key points. Ellen often seems an observer in her own story, describing what happens to her but never really influencing the action. (Even her initial call for help happens offstage.) Also, the narrative arcs of the characters fail to satisfy—it’s hard to see what each person wants or gains. The age difference between Russell and Ellen may cause some readers to find the relationship a bit creepy. The novel adheres to a white default.
Smoothly written but not cohesive or memorable. (Historical fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-7636-9744-0
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: June 9, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Eminently readable and appealing; will tug at dog-loving readers’ heartstrings.
A loquacious, lovable dog narrates the challenges of shelter life as he longs for a home.
Friendly three-legged Chance is the perfect guide to Dogtown, a shelter that houses both warmblooded and robot dogs. In fact, she’s “Management’s lucky charm,” roaming freely without being confined to a cage and leaving kibble for her mouse friend. Life is pretty good. But she still yearns for reunification with her family and, like many of the living pups, harbors suspicion of her robot counterparts, who are convenient and more easily adoptable but lacking in personality. When Metal Head, an oddly engineered e-dog, bonds with a child during a shelter reading program, Chance’s assumptions about heartless robot dogs are upended. As Chance connects with Metal Head, the two make a brief escape into the wider world, and Chance learns a familiar lesson: Everyone longs for a place to belong. Memories of Chance’s happy home loom large in her mind: Easy days with the Bessers, a sweet Black family, were disrupted by a neglectful dogsitter, the accident that cost Chance her leg, and Chance’s flight in search of safety. Chance’s chatty narrative style includes flashbacks, vignettes about fellow shelter pets, and thoughtful observations, for example, about the “boohoos,” or sad new arrivals. The story offers many moments of laughter and reflection, all greatly enhanced by West’s utterly charming grayscale illustrations of irresistible pooches.
Eminently readable and appealing; will tug at dog-loving readers’ heartstrings. (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Sept. 19, 2023
ISBN: 9781250811608
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Feiwel & Friends
Review Posted Online: July 13, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2023
The three way chats, in which they are joined by other animals, about web spinning, themselves, other humans—are as often...
A successful juvenile by the beloved New Yorker writer portrays a farm episode with an imaginative twist that makes a poignant, humorous story of a pig, a spider and a little girl.
Young Fern Arable pleads for the life of runt piglet Wilbur and gets her father to sell him to a neighbor, Mr. Zuckerman. Daily, Fern visits the Zuckermans to sit and muse with Wilbur and with the clever pen spider Charlotte, who befriends him when he is lonely and downcast. At the news of Wilbur's forthcoming slaughter, campaigning Charlotte, to the astonishment of people for miles around, spins words in her web. "Some Pig" comes first. Then "Terrific"—then "Radiant". The last word, when Wilbur is about to win a show prize and Charlotte is about to die from building her egg sac, is "Humble". And as the wonderful Charlotte does die, the sadness is tempered by the promise of more spiders next spring.
The three way chats, in which they are joined by other animals, about web spinning, themselves, other humans—are as often informative as amusing, and the whole tenor of appealing wit and pathos will make fine entertainment for reading aloud, too.Pub Date: Oct. 15, 1952
ISBN: 978-0-06-026385-0
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1952
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
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