Established as a skillful writer of deceptively simple picture books about childhood curiosity and playfulness, Banks’s first novel is intriguingly complex, enigmatic, and brilliant. From the mystique of the title, which is the main character’s name, to the opening sentence, “Each of us has a story and it starts with a name,” the reader is drawn into an eddy that swirls with the question, why would anybody stigmatize a child with the same first and last name? Dillon could never get past his name—until the family’s annual summer vacation at Lake Waban when he turns 10. His family gives him a red rowboat with his name on it—spurring him to ask “that” question out loud. The long overdue answer is that his parents are really his aunt and uncle who adopted him when his real parents were killed. The boat gives him freedom to discover himself, rowing to a nearby island where he bonds with a pair of loons who bring Dillon face-to-face with the magic and wonder of life. When they persist in building a nest in his sneaker and lay an egg in it, Dillon feels himself becoming like them. “The loon’s voice traveled into Dillon’s bones, to the depths of his soul.” He asks himself over and over again if it’s possible for a boy to become a bird. Carefully thatched strands weave throughout Dillon’s inner dialogue: his birthday boomerang that always returns, which his father says is its destiny; shoes—his as the nest and trying on his family’s shoes; the parallel of the loon parents being shot and killed over water as Dillon’s parents were killed in a plane accident over water; and the belief in the magical powers of loons to take us back to who we are. The flow of language is as smooth as calm water, the imagery graceful. As meticulous as loons preening their fathers, Banks has crafted a poignant quest for understanding by an unforgettable character whose name shaped his destiny, one that will reverberate in readers’ minds like a loon’s trill. Extraordinary. (Fiction. 8-12)
Pub Date: Aug. 27, 2002
ISBN: 0-374-31786-0
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Frances Foster/Farrar, Straus & Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2002
Readers can still rely on this series to bring laughs.
The Heffley family’s house undergoes a disastrous attempt at home improvement.
When Great Aunt Reba dies, she leaves some money to the family. Greg’s mom calls a family meeting to determine what to do with their share, proposing home improvements and then overruling the family’s cartoonish wish lists and instead pushing for an addition to the kitchen. Before bringing in the construction crew, the Heffleys attempt to do minor maintenance and repairs themselves—during which Greg fails at the work in various slapstick scenes. Once the professionals are brought in, the problems keep getting worse: angry neighbors, terrifying problems in walls, and—most serious—civil permitting issues that put the kibosh on what work’s been done. Left with only enough inheritance to patch and repair the exterior of the house—and with the school’s dismal standardized test scores as a final straw—Greg’s mom steers the family toward moving, opening up house-hunting and house-selling storylines (and devastating loyal Rowley, who doesn’t want to lose his best friend). While Greg’s positive about the move, he’s not completely uncaring about Rowley’s action. (And of course, Greg himself is not as unaffected as he wishes.) The gags include effectively placed callbacks to seemingly incidental events (the “stress lizard” brought in on testing day is particularly funny) and a lampoon of after-school-special–style problem books. Just when it seems that the Heffleys really will move, a new sequence of chaotic trouble and property destruction heralds a return to the status quo. Whew.
Readers can still rely on this series to bring laughs. (Graphic/fiction hybrid. 8-12)Pub Date: Nov. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4197-3903-3
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Amulet/Abrams
Review Posted Online: Nov. 18, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
Fiercely feisty and unapologetically goofy.
Three young girls are tasked with saving their town from a vicious worm.
This romp from actor McKinnon introduces the three Porch girls: Gertrude, age 12 and three-quarters, Eugenia, age 12 and one-eighth, and Dee-Dee, age 11. Cared for by Aunt Desdemona and Uncle Ansel (along with their seven cousins, who are all named Lavinia), they’re forced to live in a ramshackle shed at the edge of the property. In a classic turn of events, the sisters are invited to a new school run by a certain Millicent Quibb. Under Quibb’s eccentric tutelage, the trio learn that the nefarious Krenetics Research Association, hoping to release their founder, Talon Sharktūth, from his vault, has bred a Kyrgalops, a vicious stone- and puppy-chomping worm, which may destroy their entire town. McKinnon’s middle-grade debut is grandiosely silly, reminiscent of Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events in both its sesquipedalian language and tone and in relying heavily on its bespoke lexicon, verbal gymnastics, and cheeky footnotes to deliver jokes. Interspersed throughout are bits of visual interest—poems and songs, schematics, and bits of correspondence. Though the action rockets along at a Pixy Stix–fueled pace, many questions are left unanswered or unaddressed, making this series opener exposition heavy and a bit frustrating. Still, readers will ultimately be left hopeful that subsequent volumes will offer something meatier. The illustrations cue some diversity of skin tone among the characters.
Fiercely feisty and unapologetically goofy. (map, afterword, appendices) (Adventure. 8-12)Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2024
ISBN: 9780316554732
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: July 19, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2024
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