Great for those kids who’ll happily read about teddies and who enjoy genuinely scary monsters
A sweet tale of a cuddly teddy come to life…or a thrilling adventure about monster fighting?
Spark takes being Loretta’s teddy bear very seriously. At 11, Loretta will soon be too old for her teddy, though she and older brother Matthew, dedicated amateur filmmakers, create movies starring plush toys. Spark knows that being a bear is about more than childish snuggling at night, for Spark is a proud member of the League of Ursus, the society of warrior stuffed toys that since some long-ago era has protected humans from monsters. But even Spark’s bearish demeanor is barely enough to fight off the horrific monster in Loretta’s bedroom, with its massive scorpion tail and horned human head. Could the monster be connected to the disappearance of Loretta’s friend Sofia? Spark and the other neighborhood toys are unlikely heroes, but their fight is hardly adorable or safe. When a bear is nearly disemboweled by the monster, the description of trailing innards consisting of “an enormous bundle of brown thread” somehow increases the violence of the injury. As in Matthew and Loretta’s YouTube movies, a “deadly serious story acted out by ridiculous stuffed animals” is attention-grabbing. The human children are of indeterminate race. Matthew has a genetic condition that has led to mobility issues, and another child has a disability that’s mentioned in passing.
Great for those kids who’ll happily read about teddies and who enjoy genuinely scary monsters . (Fantasy. 9-11)Pub Date: April 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-68369-166-2
Page Count: 216
Publisher: Quirk Books
Review Posted Online: Dec. 7, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2020
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 waggish tale with a serious (and timely) theme.
An age-old rivalry is reluctantly put aside when two young vacationers are lost in the wilderness.
Anthropomorphic—in body if definitely not behavior—Dogg Scout Oscar and pampered Molly Hissleton stray from their separate camps, meet by chance in a trackless magic forest, and almost immediately recognize that their only chance of survival, distasteful as the notion may be, lies in calling a truce. Patterson and Grabenstein really work the notion here that cooperation is better than prejudice founded on ignorance and habit, interspersing explicit exchanges on the topic while casting the squabbling pair with complementary abilities that come out as they face challenges ranging from finding food to escaping such predators as a mountain lion and a pack of vicious “weaselboars.” By the time they cross a wide river (on a raft steered by “Old Jim,” an otter whose homespun utterances are generally cribbed from Mark Twain—an uneasy reference) back to civilization, the two are BFFs. But can that friendship survive the return, with all the social and familial pressures to resume the old enmity? A climactic cage-match–style confrontation before a worked-up multispecies audience provides the answer. In the illustrations (not seen in finished form) López plops wide-eyed animal heads atop clothed, more or less human forms and adds dialogue balloons for punchlines.
A waggish tale with a serious (and timely) theme. (Fantasy. 9-11)Pub Date: April 1, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-316-41156-1
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Jimmy Patterson/Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Dec. 15, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2019
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