Amusing, if a little clunky.
Eleven-year-old witch Della Dupree must muster all her courage when she’s stranded in the 13th century.
If only Della were brave enough to stand up against the school bullies. But Della knows that if she does, the mean girls will turn on her next. It’s already hard enough to share a name with the famous Della Dupree, who founded Ruthersfield Academy in 1223 to educate witches. Della lives in a Britain where nonmagical people know about and love witches, and her own nonwitchy family is supportive. But what if Della were to travel back in time to meet the historic Della, and what if she were to learn what it’s like to live in a time when witches are hated and feared? Della’s soon stranded in 1223, having lost the magical necklace that enabled her spur-of-the-moment illicit jaunt into the past. As Lowe writes it, history smells atrocious and features hideous food—one particularly “nasty pottage” prompts Della to make a quick magical lasagna, and a disgusting pheasant stew leads her to magic up a chicken curry—but the witch girls Della meets are lovely. She just wishes she were brave enough to save them from the dungeon. In the mildly anachronistic past of her apparently all-white village of Potts Bottom, Della finds her spunk. Slightly awkward prose with odd explanatory asides distracts from both humor and pacing, but scenes in which these medieval characters first experience modern food are mouthwatering.
Amusing, if a little clunky. (recipes, crafts) (Fantasy. 8-11)Pub Date: Aug. 4, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5344-4367-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Paula Wiseman/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 2, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2020
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
A fine emotional stretch within reach of the intended audience.
When siblings Jessie and Evan (The Lemonade War, 2007, and The Lemonade Crime, 2011) accompany their mother on the time-honored midwinter holiday visit to their grandmother’s home in the mountains, the changes are alarming.
Fire damage to the house and Grandma’s inability to recognize Evan are as disquieting as the disappearance of the iron bell, hung long ago by their grandmother on Lowell Hill and traditionally rung at the New Year. Davies keeps a tight focus on the children: Points of view switch between Evan, with his empathetic and emotional approach to understanding his world, and Jessie, for whom routine is essential and change a puzzle to be worked out. When Grandma ventures out into the snow just before twilight, it is Evan who realizes the danger and manages to find a way to rescue her. Jessie, determined to solve the mystery of the missing bell, enlists the help of Grandma's young neighbor Maxwell, with his unusual habitual gestures and his surprising ability to solve jigsaw puzzles. She is unprepared, however, for the terror of seeing the neighbor boys preparing a mechanical torture device to tear a live frog to pieces. Each of the siblings brings a personal resilience and heroism to the resolution.
A fine emotional stretch within reach of the intended audience. (Fiction. 8-11)Pub Date: May 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-547-56737-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: March 13, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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