A zany premise and an equally off-the-wall plot keep this wandering tale—the first separate outing for characters with a regular gig in MUSE magazine—afloat, but just barely. Eight of the nine ancient Muses having retired to an old-age home, humanity’s welfare is left to a motley assortment of New Muses, like featherbrained, doughnut-obsessed Feather (Muse of Plants), Aeiou (Muse of Software), Bo (Muse of Factoids) and Kokopelli the flute player (Muse of Tricks and Tunes). Though Gonick introduces Emma, a young orphan whose deranged stepfather Darien Drinkwater is out to recover a treasure that belongs to her, Kokopelli is really the central character here—and he’s bending every effort to clobber the elusive Urania, Muse of Astronomy, with ballistically launched, electronically enhanced “smart pies.” Happily, he leaves off his obsession long enough to cozen Drinkwater with the Nigerian Scam, so that Emma can recover the gold and find a new, better home. Sporting an array of odd forms in the tiny vignettes with which this tale is sprinkled, the New Muses may keep their current fans amused, but they’re unlikely to draw many new ones with this offbeat episode. (Fantasy. 9-11)
Pub Date: April 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-8126-2740-7
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Cricket
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2005
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
A waggish tale with a serious (and timely) theme.
An age-old rivalry is reluctantly put aside when two young vacationers are lost in the wilderness.
Anthropomorphic—in body if definitely not behavior—Dogg Scout Oscar and pampered Molly Hissleton stray from their separate camps, meet by chance in a trackless magic forest, and almost immediately recognize that their only chance of survival, distasteful as the notion may be, lies in calling a truce. Patterson and Grabenstein really work the notion here that cooperation is better than prejudice founded on ignorance and habit, interspersing explicit exchanges on the topic while casting the squabbling pair with complementary abilities that come out as they face challenges ranging from finding food to escaping such predators as a mountain lion and a pack of vicious “weaselboars.” By the time they cross a wide river (on a raft steered by “Old Jim,” an otter whose homespun utterances are generally cribbed from Mark Twain—an uneasy reference) back to civilization, the two are BFFs. But can that friendship survive the return, with all the social and familial pressures to resume the old enmity? A climactic cage-match–style confrontation before a worked-up multispecies audience provides the answer. In the illustrations (not seen in finished form) López plops wide-eyed animal heads atop clothed, more or less human forms and adds dialogue balloons for punchlines.
A waggish tale with a serious (and timely) theme. (Fantasy. 9-11)Pub Date: April 1, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-316-41156-1
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Jimmy Patterson/Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Dec. 15, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2019
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