Twelve-year-old Vincent, “he of the fair skin and the sad eyes, the disheveled hair and the honest smile,” has spent the...
An overwrought fairy tale within a fairy tale.
Twelve-year-old Vincent, “he of the fair skin and the sad eyes, the disheveled hair and the honest smile,” has spent the last two years in an orphanage, ever since the total destruction of his home by a dragon. When the news of his grandfather’s death comes, the orphanage director refuses to let him attend the funeral but does hand him a mysterious book that his grandfather left him. The book recounts the strange adventures of another boy named Vincent, cursed by a witch. From there, chapters alternate between the two stories. Vincent No. 1 runs away to attend the funeral but is foiled by a snowstorm and a gang of murderers; Vincent No. 2 becomes trapped by a giant, escapes on a magical horse and eventually defeats an evil dwarf and then the witch herself—and finds a magical world quite a bit like heaven, too. It seems the real world and the book world are meant to gradually intersect, but the “real” world, with its bleak, Aiken-esque orphanage and marauding dragons, is too unreal for contrast. Fantastic elements appear without warning or logic, and none of the characters ascend beyond stereotypes. The two Vincents in particular seem to react rather than act. The passive, omniscient narration seems designed to throw the affected language into jarring relief.Pub Date: April 22, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-06-199871-3
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Walden Pond Press/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Jan. 28, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2014
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
A fine emotional stretch within reach of the intended audience.
When siblings Jessie and Evan (The Lemonade War, 2007, and The Lemonade Crime, 2011) accompany their mother on the time-honored midwinter holiday visit to their grandmother’s home in the mountains, the changes are alarming.
Fire damage to the house and Grandma’s inability to recognize Evan are as disquieting as the disappearance of the iron bell, hung long ago by their grandmother on Lowell Hill and traditionally rung at the New Year. Davies keeps a tight focus on the children: Points of view switch between Evan, with his empathetic and emotional approach to understanding his world, and Jessie, for whom routine is essential and change a puzzle to be worked out. When Grandma ventures out into the snow just before twilight, it is Evan who realizes the danger and manages to find a way to rescue her. Jessie, determined to solve the mystery of the missing bell, enlists the help of Grandma's young neighbor Maxwell, with his unusual habitual gestures and his surprising ability to solve jigsaw puzzles. She is unprepared, however, for the terror of seeing the neighbor boys preparing a mechanical torture device to tear a live frog to pieces. Each of the siblings brings a personal resilience and heroism to the resolution.
A fine emotional stretch within reach of the intended audience. (Fiction. 8-11)Pub Date: May 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-547-56737-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: March 13, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2012
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