Danziger (What a Trip, Amber Brown, 2001, etc.) breaks new ground with this amusing middle-school story illustrated in a novel way—with scrapbook art by the author done in the style of the sixth-grade narrator, Skate Tate. (Scrapbooking is the popular hobby of compiling photo albums and decorating the pages with stickers and special papers.) In diary-like fashion, Skate tells the story of her first stressful months at Biddle Middle School, when she must adjust to a long bus ride, a new building, different friends, and the sudden death of her adored globetrotting relative called GUM (the family nickname for Great-Uncle Mort). The first-person story is told in present tense, mainly in one-sentence paragraphs that approach stream-of-consciousness mode, supplemented with the addition of a few school assignments and scrapbook entries in different typefaces. Skate has lots of typical sixth-grade worries about her place at school and with her friend, but she has a solid, happy family life, and her wise great-uncle helps her with her self-confidence issues in some creative ways that support Skate’s budding talent as an artist. A 32-page, full-color insert of sample scrapbook pages shows photographs of Skate and her family and friends (using friends of the author for the models), including several pages detailing a family trip to Plymouth, Massachusetts. Danziger creates a believable, humorous world for Skate and her family, and GUM is a character anyone would love to have as a relative. The author’s scrapbook art may inspire readers to try crafting their own documentary pages. (Fiction. 9-11)
Pub Date: April 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-590-69221-6
Page Count: 144
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2002
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Though it lacks nuance, still a must-read.
Tyler is the son of generations of Vermont dairy farmers.
Mari is the Mexican-born daughter of undocumented migrant laborers whose mother has vanished in a perilous border crossing. When Tyler’s father is disabled in an accident, the only way the family can afford to keep the farm is by hiring Mari’s family. As Tyler and Mari’s friendship grows, the normal tensions of middle-school boy-girl friendships are complicated by philosophical and political truths. Tyler wonders how he can be a patriot while his family breaks the law. Mari worries about her vanished mother and lives in fear that she will be separated from her American-born sisters if la migra comes. Unashamedly didactic, Alvarez’s novel effectively complicates simple equivalencies between what’s illegal and what’s wrong. Mari’s experience is harrowing, with implied atrocities and immigration raids, but equally full of good people doing the best they can. The two children find hope despite the unhappily realistic conclusions to their troubles, in a story which sees the best in humanity alongside grim realities.
Though it lacks nuance, still a must-read. (Fiction. 9-11)Pub Date: Jan. 13, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-375-85838-3
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2008
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
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