Sweet and heartwarming—but unsettlingly conflicted
A 12-year-old with severe facial burns hides from the world—until she meets the new neighbors, who fly a magic zeppelin and babysit infant stars.
The accident that burned Luna and left her father unable to walk sapped all joy from her life. A compression mask covering half her face is both uncomfortable and weird looking. With Luna’s arm injuries, even drawing brings pain. Her large Italian American family loves her, but their disgusted pity at her facial difference only enhances her panic and shame. Late one night, Luna spies new people moving into the house next door. When Luna follows these new kids into the woods behind her Staten Island home, she discovers them caring for baby stars, and Alessandro and Chiara bring Luna into their world. During the day, narrator Luna is a terrified girl with an overprotective mother, unwilling to speak even with her best friend. But by night, she’s one of the spazzatrici, polishing the sky. Readers familiar with disability tropes will anticipate Luna’s choice: Will she use a star’s magic to wish herself uninjured, or will she learn that the true magic was inside her all along? While Luna’s journey attempts to avoid the shopworn magical-cure trope, it does not wholly succeed; her happy ending requires discovering not just inner, but also outer beauty. The primary cast is an all-white one.
Sweet and heartwarming—but unsettlingly conflicted . (Fantasy. 8-11)Pub Date: Aug. 20, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5344-2896-6
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: April 27, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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