From a fine British author, little known in the US (The Elephant War, 1971, available in paper, is a sequel to Maria Escapes): an entertainingly old-fashioned novel about Victorian Oxford, published in Britain in 1957 as The Warden's Niece. Resourcefully fleeing her dreary boarding school, orphaned Maria, 11, catches a train to amiable but abstracted Uncle Hadden, an Oxford college warden. Though she's met him just once, he's her new guardian; he decides that she'll study with his neighbors' three sons, who have an amusingly idiosyncratic tutor. Maria, who hopes to be a classics professor, is well suited by this and soon engaged in the boys' pranks and pursuits and in endeavoring to prove herself by researching an unidentified boy in a 17th-century drawing. Painfully shy but intrepid, she talks her way into the Bodleian, sidesteps fierce housekeepers, and pieces together a history that finally engages her increasingly affectionate uncle's full attention. The lively dialogue and pungent descriptions here recall Trollope's satirical but kindly perceptions. Avery reanimates a period when education for girls was controversial and a child could be enthusiastic about exploring epitaphs in a country church; creates spirited characters whose unfailing courtesy in no way inhibits their mischief; and provides suspenseful escapades as well as a satisfying historical mystery. It's to be hoped that the sequels will follow Maria to the US. (Fiction. 10- 13)
Pub Date: June 30, 1992
ISBN: 0-671-77074-8
Page Count: 258
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1992
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A world-class charmer, Clements (The Janitor’s Boy, 2000, etc.) woos aspiring young authors—as well as grown up publishers, editors, agents, parents, teachers, and even reviewers—with this tongue-in-cheek tale of a 12-year-old novelist’s triumphant debut. Sparked by a chance comment of her mother’s, a harried assistant editor for a (surely fictional) children’s imprint, Natalie draws on deep reserves of feeling and writing talent to create a moving story about a troubled schoolgirl and her father. First, it moves her pushy friend Zoe, who decides that it has to be published; then it moves a timorous, second-year English teacher into helping Zoe set up a virtual literary agency; then, submitted pseudonymously, it moves Natalie’s unsuspecting mother into peddling it to her waspish editor-in-chief. Depicting the world of children’s publishing as a delicious mix of idealism and office politics, Clements squires the manuscript past slush pile and contract, the editing process, and initial buzz (“The Cheater grabs hold of your heart and never lets go,” gushes Kirkus). Finally, in a tearful, joyous scene—carefully staged by Zoe, who turns out to be perfect agent material: cunning, loyal, devious, manipulative, utterly shameless—at the publication party, Natalie’s identity is revealed as news cameras roll. Selznick’s gnomic, realistic portraits at once reflect the tale’s droll undertone and deftly capture each character’s distinct personality. Terrific for flourishing school writing projects, this is practical as well as poignant. Indeed, it “grabs hold of yourheart and never lets go.” (Fiction. 10-12)
Pub Date: June 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-689-82594-3
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2001
“Hear, and listen well, my friends, and I will tell you a tale that has been told for a thousand years and more.” It’s not exactly a rarely told tale, either, though this complete rendition is distinguished by both handsome packaging and a prose narrative that artfully mixes alliterative language reminiscent of the original, with currently topical references to, for instance, Grendel’s “endless terror raids,” and the “holocaust at Heorot.” Along with being printed on heavy stock and surrounded by braided borders, the text is paired to colorful scenes featuring a small human warrior squaring off with a succession of grimacing but not very frightening monsters in battles marked by but a few discreet splashes of blood. Morpurgo puts his finger on the story’s enduring appeal—“we still fear the evil that stalks out there in the darkness . . . ”—but offers a version unlikely to trouble the sleep of more sensitive readers or listeners. (Fiction. 10-12)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-7636-3206-6
Page Count: 96
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2006
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