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WHY BEGINS WITH W

Name: WHY BEGINS WITH W
Author: Leo Schulte

A LESSON IN MURDER

by Leo Schulte & John Schulte ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 8, 2013

Ambitious, but seriously lacking polish—and also a reason to read any sequels.

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A light scattering of digital inserts doesn’t raise the grade of this mannered tale of high school murder, published on paper in 2009.

Framed as transcribed entries from a found journal, the open-ended tale begins with the discovery of a (supposed) murder-suicide and ends with the further death of a (purported) witness. In between, the unnamed narrator intersperses the account of the investigations with low opinions of fellow students, teachers, school lunch, Hemingway and like adolescent targets. A clutch of ambiguous incidents, inscrutable clues and unreliable-sounding witnesses all remain so at the end and shed no more light on what’s going on than do the bombastic side comments (“Intelligence is gender neutral, but stupidity is a bitch”) that appear when the antique woodcut vignettes scattered throughout are clicked. Nor are readers likely to be engaged by the narrator’s teasing refusals to reveal his or her gender (a reference to a boys’ gym class is probably an authorial mistake rather than a deliberate clue). A jumbled Blair Witch Project–style video trailer is tacked to the front end.

Ambitious, but seriously lacking polish—and also a reason to read any sequels. (Enhanced e-book mystery. 12-14)

Pub Date: April 8, 2013

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: PANGEA

Review Posted Online: May 7, 2013

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2013

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RED-EYED TREE FROG

by Joy Cowley ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 1999

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Bishop’s spectacular photographs of the tiny red-eyed tree frog defeat an incidental text from Cowley (Singing Down the Rain, 1997, etc.). The frog, only two inches long, is enormous in this title; it appears along with other nocturnal residents of the rain forests of Central America, including the iguana, ant, katydid, caterpillar, and moth. In a final section, Cowley explains how small the frog is and aspects of its life cycle. The main text, however, is an afterthought to dramatic events in the photos, e.g., “But the red-eyed tree frog has been asleep all day. It wakes up hungry. What will it eat? Here is an iguana. Frogs do not eat iguanas.” Accompanying an astonishing photograph of the tree frog leaping away from a boa snake are three lines (“The snake flicks its tongue. It tastes frog in the air. Look out, frog!”) that neither advance nor complement the action. The layout employs pale and deep green pages and typeface, and large jewel-like photographs in which green and red dominate. The combination of such visually sophisticated pages and simplistic captions make this a top-heavy, unsatisfying title. (Picture book. 7-9)

Pub Date: March 1, 1999

ISBN: 0-590-87175-7

Page Count: 32

Publisher: Scholastic

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1999

Categories:

CHILDREN'S ANIMALS

- BOOK REVIEW
THE TINY WOMAN'S COAT
by Joy Cowley ; illustrated by Giselle Clarkson

- BOOK REVIEW
SONG OF THE RIVER
by Joy Cowley ; illustrated by Kimberly Andrews

- BOOK REVIEW
THE WARLI PEOPLE
by Hye-Eun Shin ; illustrated by Su-Bi Jeong ; edited by Joy Cowley

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THE TIGER RISING

by Kate DiCamillo ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2001

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Themes of freedom and responsibility twine between the lines of this short but heavy novel from the author of Because of Winn-Dixie (2000). Three months after his mother's death, Rob and his father are living in a small-town Florida motel, each nursing sharp, private pain. On the same day Rob has two astonishing encounters: first, he stumbles upon a caged tiger in the woods behind the motel; then he meets Sistine, a new classmate responding to her parents' breakup with ready fists and a big chip on her shoulder. About to burst with his secret, Rob confides in Sistine, who instantly declares that the tiger must be freed. As Rob quickly develops a yen for Sistine's company that gives her plenty of emotional leverage, and the keys to the cage almost literally drop into his hands, credible plotting plainly takes a back seat to character delineation here. And both struggle for visibility beneath a wagonload of symbol and metaphor: the real tiger (and the inevitable recitation of Blake's poem); the cage; Rob's dream of Sistine riding away on the beast's back; a mysterious skin condition on Rob's legs that develops after his mother's death; a series of wooden figurines that he whittles; a larger-than-life African-American housekeeper at the motel who dispenses wisdom with nearly every utterance; and the climax itself, which is signaled from the start. It's all so freighted with layers of significance that, like Lois Lowry's Gathering Blue (2000), Anne Mazer's Oxboy (1995), or, further back, Julia Cunningham's Dorp Dead (1965), it becomes more an exercise in analysis than a living, breathing story. Still, the tiger, "burning bright" with magnificent, feral presence, does make an arresting central image. (Fiction. 10-12)