Delightful.
Here’s a different Becky Thatcher: She spews spitballs, prefers overalls to dresses, takes dares from boys and tracks down criminals.
In this debut novel, Becky’s voice, full of Southern expressions and superstitions, describes events that occur in her new hometown of St. Petersburg, Mo., during the time that steamboat captain and aspiring writer Sam Clemens is boarding with Tom Sawyer and Aunt Polly. As Becky digs up a beetle to avenge a cruel insult to her best friend, she muses: “I didn’t know why they were called gull beetles, but I reckoned it had something to do with the high-pitched shriek Ruth Bumpner would let out when she found one buried in her egg salad sometime in the next week or so.” Even as Becky’s adventures reveal bits of plot and characters that will later be found in Mark Twain’s writing, readers also enter Becky’s personal world, which includes the different ways she and her parents are grieving her beloved brother’s death. The novel’s predominantly light tone and narrative perspective make the flatness of the villains forgivable—there’s a sadistic schoolteacher, a snobbish family and two stupid smugglers—while Becky and her many allies are all realistically well-rounded. Beneath the lively story is a subtext that both primes readers for reading Mark Twain and responds to the question of where writers find inspiration.
Delightful. (Historical fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: July 22, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4814-0150-0
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: March 30, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Hugely entertaining, timely, and triumphant.
Robot Roz undertakes an unusual ocean journey to save her adopted island home in this third series entry.
When a poison tide flowing across the ocean threatens their island, Roz works with the resident creatures to ensure that they will have clean water, but the destruction of vegetation and crowding of habitats jeopardize everyone’s survival. Brown’s tale of environmental depredation and turmoil is by turns poignant, graceful, endearing, and inspiring, with his (mostly) gentle robot protagonist at its heart. Though Roz is different from the creatures she lives with or encounters—including her son, Brightbill the goose, and his new mate, Glimmerwing—she makes connections through her versatile communication abilities and her desire to understand and help others. When Roz accidentally discovers that the replacement body given to her by Dr. Molovo is waterproof, she sets out to seek help and discovers the human-engineered source of the toxic tide. Brown’s rich descriptions of undersea landscapes, entertaining conversations between Roz and wild creatures, and concise yet powerful explanations of the effect of the poison tide on the ecology of the island are superb. Simple, spare illustrations offer just enough glimpses of Roz and her surroundings to spark the imagination. The climactic confrontation pits oceangoing mammals, seabirds, fish, and even zooplankton against hardware and technology in a nicely choreographed battle. But it is Roz’s heroism and peacemaking that save the day.
Hugely entertaining, timely, and triumphant. (author’s note) (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Sept. 26, 2023
ISBN: 9780316669412
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 26, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 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
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