Uneven but could get kids thinking about ways to safeguard the environment.
Fifth in a series, this children’s chapter book finds practical and fanciful ways to promote environmentalism.
Jackson, nearly 11, came back to Earth about a year ago with his mother and sister from their dying world. Tara, a girl from Earth his age, found a magic portal and led them to safety as predicted by Magic Moon, who grants certain requests and gives advice. In Magic Moon’s new world, he helped young Farni, who was being bullied—no more, thanks in part to the protection of Brown Bear. Now, though, Brown Bear is in danger, his kind almost extinct. Magic Moon suggests using an upcoming solar eclipse to get the villagers’ attention and demonstrate Brown Bear’s harmlessness. On Earth, Jackson looks forward to going with Tara and her family to Bears Ears National Monument—but is saddened to learn that the government plans to discontinue many protections for the area. He decides to get signatures on a petition and send it to his representative. On an exciting ride in Tara’s grandfather’s helicopter, also during a solar eclipse, the families fly through another magic portal to Farni’s world, which Magic Moon says can be another home for endangered species like grizzlies. In both worlds, children learn that they can make a difference. Moulton (Magic Moon: A New Beginning [Vol. 4], 2017, etc.) employs humor and the appeal of magic to enliven her protect-the-environment message. The idea of a Noah’s Ark planet where endangered species can safely live also has a lot of appeal. Dialogue reveals character well; for example, the children speak casually, while the scientists on Farni’s world use a stuffier register—an amusing contrast to Magic Moon’s directness. For example, after Magic Moon booms, “I’m right here!” the scientists reply with “It speaks!...What manner of being is this?” The overall story unfolds via short chapters that alternate between worlds, and it can be hard to follow the separate plotlines, which tend to get lost in all the detail about, for example, proper viewing equipment for the eclipse.
Uneven but could get kids thinking about ways to safeguard the environment.Pub Date: Nov. 16, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-9983137-3-3
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Time Tunnel Media
Review Posted Online: July 16, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
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