A sourpuss principal successfully forces a beloved teacher into retirement in this sketchy, unsatisfying import. So fond of giving presents that he’s nicknamed “Santa,” Hubert Noël starts the school year by passing out a set of coupons, each of which can be redeemed for skipping a day of school, eating in class, clowning around, refusing to go to the chalkboard, or some like gift. This goes over like a lead balloon with his new principal, Madame Incarnation Perez, who repeatedly calls him on the carpet, and at last hands him walking papers. Not even getting her own book of coupons (“One coupon for a smile . . . one coupon to make up a poem,” etc.) softens her attitude, so Noël finishes the year and quietly goes off, with a coupon from his students, “for a happy and well-deserved retirement.” The point of view shifts erratically from various children to Perez or Noël, and the plot is little more than a string of teachable moments. Readers hoping for the emotional depth of Secret Letters From 0 To 10 (1998) or an effervescent classroom environment à la Gregory Maguire’s Seven Spiders Spinning (1994) and its sequels, will be disappointed. Occasional, freely drawn cartoons add little to the atmosphere or humor. (Fiction. 9-11)
Pub Date: May 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-670-89970-4
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2001
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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