The book doesn’t dwell long enough on the smallest moments, but each of them feels like meeting the baseball legend—and...
Brooklyn Dodgers fan Steve’s life is changed when Jackie Robinson and his family move into his Jewish neighborhood in 1948.
This is a true story—parts of it, anyway. The author is Robinson’s daughter, and the main character was her family’s neighbor in real life. Stephen Satlow was a baseball fan, and he lived two doors down from his hero. The author has changed some details (one character is a composite), but readers may find themselves hoping every word is accurate. The Jackie Robinson in the book seems just as kind and thoughtful as the real Jackie sounded in interviews and news stories. When 8-year-old narrator Steve is having a rough time at school, Jackie walks over to the school softball game and teaches the whole team about stealing bases. There isn’t much conflict here. The story is just as down-to-earth and remarkable as the actual baseball star, and it would feel mean-spirited to wish any more drama on these two genuinely endearing people. Absent drama to drive the plot, the book’s main fault is that it doesn’t make enough of the magical everyday moments. A scene of Jackie and Steve playing stoopball could have lasted pages longer. Jackie’s son, Jackie Junior, is hardly a character here, another missed opportunity.
The book doesn’t dwell long enough on the smallest moments, but each of them feels like meeting the baseball legend—and maybe, sometimes, even better than the real thing. (historical note, photos) (Historical fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Jan. 26, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-545-80451-6
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Oct. 13, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2015
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
Funny and endearing, though incomplete characterizations provoke questions.
An isolated class of misfits and a teacher on the edge of retirement are paired together for a year of (supposed) failure.
Zachary Kermit, a 55-year-old teacher, has been haunted for the last 27 years by a student cheating scandal that has earned him the derision of his colleagues and killed his teaching spirit. So when he is assigned to teach the Self-Contained Special Eighth-Grade Class—a dumping ground for “the Unteachables,” students with “behavior issues, learning problems, juvenile delinquents”—he is unfazed, as he is only a year away from early retirement. His relationship with his seven students—diverse in temperament, circumstance, and ability—will be one of “uncomfortable roommates” until June. But when Mr. Kermit unexpectedly stands up for a student, the kids of SCS-8 notice his sense of “justice and fairness.” Mr. Kermit finds he may even care a little about them, and they start to care back in their own way, turning a corner and bringing along a few ghosts from Mr. Kermit’s past. Writing in the alternating voices of Mr. Kermit, most of his students, and two administrators, Korman spins a narrative of redemption and belief in exceeding self-expectations. Naming conventions indicate characters of different ethnic backgrounds, but the book subscribes to a white default. The two students who do not narrate may be students of color, and their characterizations subtly—though arguably inadequately—demonstrate the danger of preconceptions.
Funny and endearing, though incomplete characterizations provoke questions. (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Jan. 8, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-06-256388-0
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Balzer + Bray/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Sept. 16, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2018
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