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THE SONG FROM SOMEWHERE ELSE

A captivating British import.

Francesca “Frank” Patel’s summer holiday is interrupted, first by bullies and then by a glimpse of another world.

The neighborhood goons pick on Frank with escalating meanness. But the odd, large, flat-faced boy from her school whose name (Nicholas Underbridge) hints at his unusual origins—the boy everyone claims smells and no one wants to sit with—rescues her bag from a nettle field where the bullies tossed it, then takes her to his house for refuge. Nick’s house, filled with his dad’s colorful abstract paintings, is otherwise tidy except for two things: there is a damp, rich, earthy odor there, and Frank hears extraordinary music that fills her soul and makes her long for more. Frank’s curiosity results in a frightening, nearly world-ending chain of events. Harrold gracefully tosses together hints of quantum physics, old legends, and magic-ministry–type agents. Frank’s struggle to reconcile her fear of her bullies, her growing friendship with Nick, and the truth about the maker of otherworldly music are poignantly convincing and likable. Pinfold’s atmospheric illustrations, darkly menacing and mysterious by turns, add to the contemporary folk-tale atmosphere. The only hints about Frank’s Indian heritage are her name and a minor moment when an elderly woman asks Frank’s wisecracking at-home dad if they have tuna fish “where you come from.”

A captivating British import. (Fantasy. 8-11)

Pub Date: July 4, 2017

ISBN: 978-1-68119-401-1

Page Count: 224

Publisher: Bloomsbury

Review Posted Online: April 16, 2017

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2017

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TUCK EVERLASTING

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. 

However the compelling fitness of theme and event and the apt but unexpected imagery (the opening sentences compare the first week in August when this takes place to "the highest seat of a Ferris wheel when it pauses in its turning") help to justify the extravagant early assertion that had the secret about to be revealed been known at the time of the action, the very earth "would have trembled on its axis like a beetle on a pin." (Fantasy. 9-11)

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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DIARY OF A WIMPY KID

A NOVEL IN CARTOONS

From the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series , Vol. 1

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

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