Runs to surprising depths, and Sammy the donkey will live long in young memory.
Dendler (Dottie’s Daring Day, 2017, etc.) addresses overcoming preconceptions in this middle-grade fairy tale.
Thirteen-year-old Bianca is known throughout the Kingdom of Pacifico as the Frail and Delicate Princess. She was very weak at birth and has spent her entire life in the castle, kept safe by her loving, overprotective father. Bianca does not feel frail and delicate. She may be cosseted (“Never…was she allowed to meet other children….Who knew what kind of diseases they carried?”), but she has grown into a healthy young girl, brimming with imagination and yearning to explore the world. Yet how can she? She is the Frail and Delicate Princess, and that is all there is to it…until a fire-breathing dragon threatens the kingdom and Bianca’s father and his bravest knights march off to do battle with it. When they don’t return, Bianca sneaks out and embarks on her own quest. With only a charismatic donkey for company, she will track down the dragon. She will save the kingdom and be Frail and Delicate no longer! Dendler writes on the safe side of scary, capturing the magical essence rather than the Grimm aspect of fairy tales. Bianca’s adventure may be straightforward, but it remains spry and charming, its message of empowerment no less effective for being overt. Primary school readers surely will empathize with Bianca (nobody should be chained by assumptions of what they can and cannot do), yet hers is not the only life being affected by pigeonholing. Throughout the story, hidden in plain sight amid the palace folk and fairy-tale tropes and exquisitely characterized animals, Dendler presents a subtler exploration of labeling. It’s to her great credit that the book’s denouement, though obvious in retrospect, comes as both uplifting and unforeseen. Bianca, all told, is a memorable middle-grade heroine.
Runs to surprising depths, and Sammy the donkey will live long in young memory.Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-692-93829-4
Page Count: 134
Publisher: Serenity Mountain Publishing
Review Posted Online: Oct. 4, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
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