Appealing as a story of school and friendship as well as family.
Wren’s school year is off to a rocky start after a summer turned upside down by her parents’ divorce.
Nine-year-old Wren, who is white, as are her parents and most of her friends, doesn’t know quite how to explain her summerlong silence to her best friend, Amber. The gap between them seems to widen when it appears that newcomer Marianna has supplanted Wren for Amber. A transplant to this small Wisconsin town from Seattle, Marianna has an enviable self-assurance and panache, along with an off-putting swagger. Meanwhile Wren is busy trying to hide her situation and make sense of her new schedule, with weekdays at Mom’s and weekends at Dad’s small cabin across the lake. She uses her phone’s dictionary both to define and frame her questions about divorce and family changes. Bowe’s first-person voice for Wren is quietly contemplative, frustrated, and confused by the disruption in her family but also determined to sort out how things will work. It’s a realistic young voice nicely free from snarky irony, and it’s focused on the arts of questioning and paying attention to the answers. Marianna has secrets of her own, and the growing bond between the girls is restorative for each of them as well as for Wren’s friendship with Amber.
Appealing as a story of school and friendship as well as family. (Fiction. 8-11)Pub Date: March 21, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-8037-3693-1
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Kathy Dawson/Penguin
Review Posted Online: Nov. 15, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2016
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
Ironically, by choosing such a dramatic catalyst, the author weakens the adventure’s impact overall and leaves readers to...
A group of talking farm animals catches wind of the farm owner’s intention to burn the barn (with them in it) for insurance money and hatches a plan to flee.
Bond begins briskly—within the first 10 pages, barn cat Burdock has overheard Dewey Baxter’s nefarious plan, and by Page 17, all of the farm animals have been introduced and Burdock is sharing the terrifying news. Grady, Dewey’s (ever-so-slightly) more principled brother, refuses to go along, but instead of standing his ground, he simply disappears. This leaves the animals to fend for themselves. They do so by relying on their individual strengths and one another. Their talents and personalities match their species, bringing an element of realism to balance the fantasy elements. However, nothing can truly compensate for the bland horror of the premise. Not the growing sense of family among the animals, the serendipitous intervention of an unknown inhabitant of the barn, nor the convenient discovery of an alternate home. Meanwhile, Bond’s black-and-white drawings, justly compared to those of Garth Williams, amplify the sense of dissonance. Charming vignettes and single- and double-page illustrations create a pastoral world into which the threat of large-scale violence comes as a shock.
Ironically, by choosing such a dramatic catalyst, the author weakens the adventure’s impact overall and leaves readers to ponder the awkward coincidences that propel the plot. (Animal fantasy. 8-10)Pub Date: July 7, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-544-33217-1
Page Count: 256
Publisher: HMH Books
Review Posted Online: March 31, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2015
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