Lucy loves her summers at her grandparents’ cottage. She and her grandfather have a special ability shared by a select few: Their penchant for growing things and their love of the natural world means that they can both see Lob, an incarnation of the traditional green man who helps out in the garden, bestowing growing magic wherever he goes. When Lucy’s dear grandfather dies and his garden is paved over for new homes, both Lucy and Lob are at a loss. Lucy invites Lob to come and live with her, but she and her family don’t have a garden plot at their London home. The narrative traces Lucy’s journey and Lob’s—occasionally presenting Lob’s point of view in haiku-like verses printed in large type—as they try to find each other again. With a decidedly old-fashioned feel, the story moves at a leisurely pace, keeping at the forefront the importance of connection to the earth and its seasons. Unfortunately, the rather flat characters, particularly Lucy, may not be compelling enough to make readers care. (Magical adventure. 8-11)
Pub Date: Nov. 9, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-385-75204-6
Page Count: 224
Publisher: David Fickling/Random
Review Posted Online: Oct. 1, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2010
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
The journey is even gently funny—Omakayas’s brother spends much of the year with a porcupine on his head. Charming and...
This third entry in the Birchbark House series takes Omakayas and her family west from their home on the Island of the Golden-Breasted Woodpecker, away from land the U.S. government has claimed.
Difficulties abound; the unknown landscape is fraught with danger, and they are nearing hostile Bwaanag territory. Omakayas’s family is not only close, but growing: The travelers adopt two young chimookoman (white) orphans along the way. When treachery leaves them starving and alone in a northern Minnesota winter, it will take all of their abilities and love to survive. The heartwarming account of Omakayas’s year of travel explores her changing family relationships and culminates in her first moon, the onset of puberty. It would be understandable if this darkest-yet entry in Erdrich’s response to the Little House books were touched by bitterness, yet this gladdening story details Omakayas’s coming-of-age with appealing optimism.
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-06-029787-9
Page Count: 208
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2008
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