This blend of history with mystery and fantasy with realism is a good find indeed.
The mystery of the Lost Colony of Roanoke becomes an engaging backdrop for a preteen experiencing her own losses.
Nell Dare has her summer all planned: she’ll take tennis lessons with her BFF and stay with her writer father in their New York City apartment while her botanist mother works on the Outer Banks of North Carolina. When her ever quarreling parents separate suddenly and her father leaves without a goodbye, the white girl must give up her dreams and help her mother study the “Mother Vine,” the oldest cultivated grapevine in America, perhaps even known to the first English colonists. In her quiet yet evenly paced narration, the preteen meets two new friends, both also white. She’s drawn to Ambrose, a Colonial re-enactor from England whose own father left and hasn’t returned, and bristles against Lila, a know-it-all local-history buff who searches for ghost activity related to the Lost Colony. Hoping to best Lila, Nell teams up with Ambrose to discover Lost Colony clues and entice her father to return and write about them. Interspersed throughout are diary entries from a member of the Lost Colony. Mounting evidence offers possible connections to the Lost Colony’s fate and Ambrose’s otherworldly relation to the colonists. Readers will have fun realizing the author of the diary entries long before Nell.
This blend of history with mystery and fantasy with realism is a good find indeed. (author’s note, historical notes) (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: May 24, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4814-5896-2
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Aladdin
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2016
The three way chats, in which they are joined by other animals, about web spinning, themselves, other humans—are as often...
A successful juvenile by the beloved New Yorker writer portrays a farm episode with an imaginative twist that makes a poignant, humorous story of a pig, a spider and a little girl.
Young Fern Arable pleads for the life of runt piglet Wilbur and gets her father to sell him to a neighbor, Mr. Zuckerman. Daily, Fern visits the Zuckermans to sit and muse with Wilbur and with the clever pen spider Charlotte, who befriends him when he is lonely and downcast. At the news of Wilbur's forthcoming slaughter, campaigning Charlotte, to the astonishment of people for miles around, spins words in her web. "Some Pig" comes first. Then "Terrific"—then "Radiant". The last word, when Wilbur is about to win a show prize and Charlotte is about to die from building her egg sac, is "Humble". And as the wonderful Charlotte does die, the sadness is tempered by the promise of more spiders next spring.
The three way chats, in which they are joined by other animals, about web spinning, themselves, other humans—are as often informative as amusing, and the whole tenor of appealing wit and pathos will make fine entertainment for reading aloud, too.Pub Date: Oct. 15, 1952
ISBN: 978-0-06-026385-0
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1952
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
A real gem.
A 10-year old girl learns to adjust to a strange town, makes some fascinating friends, and fills the empty space in her heart thanks to a big old stray dog in this lyrical, moving, and enchanting book by a fresh new voice.
India Opal’s mama left when she was only three, and her father, “the preacher,” is absorbed in his own loss and in the work of his new ministry at the Open-Arms Baptist Church of Naomi [Florida]. Enter Winn-Dixie, a dog who “looked like a big piece of old brown carpet that had been left out in the rain.” But, this dog had a grin “so big that it made him sneeze.” And, as Opal says, “It’s hard not to immediately fall in love with a dog who has a good sense of humor.” Because of Winn-Dixie, Opal meets Miss Franny Block, an elderly lady whose papa built her a library of her own when she was just a little girl and she’s been the librarian ever since. Then, there’s nearly blind Gloria Dump, who hangs the empty bottle wreckage of her past from the mistake tree in her back yard. And, Otis, oh yes, Otis, whose music charms the gerbils, rabbits, snakes and lizards he’s let out of their cages in the pet store. Brush strokes of magical realism elevate this beyond a simple story of friendship to a well-crafted tale of community and fellowship, of sweetness, sorrow and hope. And, it’s funny, too.
A real gem. (Fiction. 9-12)Pub Date: March 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-7636-0776-2
Page Count: 182
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2000
SEEN & HEARD
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