A quirky existential adventure for thoughtful readers.
Faced with sudden life changes, a boy blindly rushes into a deserted construction site and falls into a hole.
Danny comes home from school one day to discover that his parents have boxed up all his possessions, given his dog Thwack away and are separating to pursue their artistic dreams. Understandably infected with a “terrible energy” that sends him pelting down the street, he is too distracted to watch his step. As a result, he finds himself at the bottom of a steep-walled pit, with no cellphone service and only the contents of his backpack for supplies. Being generally a levelheaded sort (“His parents always said he was practical, as if it were some kind of defect”), he takes inventory, does his homework, turns a garbage bag into a shelter—and, along with thinking his own thoughts, has some therapeutic interchanges with a chatty mole and a treacherous snake. Rescued the next day, he emerges to what seems a bright, new world, and though his repentant parents have put everything back the way it was, he lets them know that it’s OK to move on. Despite the talking animals, it’s more Robinson Crusoe than Alice in Wonderland, with comical dialogue and occasional cartoon illustrations lightening the emotional load.
A quirky existential adventure for thoughtful readers. (Fantasy. 9-11)Pub Date: April 9, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-55498-311-7
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Groundwood
Review Posted Online: Feb. 12, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2013
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
SEEN & HEARD
Certain to elicit both gales of giggles and winces of sympathy (not to mention recognition) from young readers.
First volume of a planned three, this edited version of an ongoing online serial records a middle-school everykid’s triumphs and (more often) tribulations through the course of a school year.
Largely through his own fault, mishaps seem to plague Greg at every turn, from the minor freak-outs of finding himself permanently seated in class between two pierced stoners and then being saddled with his mom for a substitute teacher, to being forced to wrestle in gym with a weird classmate who has invited him to view his “secret freckle.” Presented in a mix of legible “hand-lettered” text and lots of simple cartoon illustrations with the punch lines often in dialogue balloons, Greg’s escapades, unwavering self-interest and sardonic commentary are a hoot and a half.
Certain to elicit both gales of giggles and winces of sympathy (not to mention recognition) from young readers. (Fiction. 9-11)Pub Date: April 1, 2007
ISBN: 0-8109-9313-9
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Amulet/Abrams
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2007
SEEN & HEARD
PERSPECTIVES
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