Felicia ("Felix"), 12, recounts her adventures with stepsister Amy, also 12, and Amy's 10-year-old brother, Phillip, when the three are dragged along on their parents' honeymoon. With her attention focused on her bitter feud with Amy, Felix carelessly gives a friendly stranger (Grace), met on the street in Toledo, an exaggerated impression of the family's wealth. Later, her parents accept Grace's offer to take the three kids to to see some windmills—a venture that promptly becomes a kidnapping, planned by Grace as a transfer of what she sees as excess wealth to more needy children. But the plan is perverted by the greed of her unscrupulous accomplices—and, horrified, Grace finally helps her victims escape; in turn, they conceal her part in the venture. The beginning here is comfortably predictable, the climax appropriately suspenseful (as Amy and Felix flee, hide, bicker, and warily begin to accept each other), and the conclusion has some satisfying twists that grow logically out of the lightly sketched but plausible characterizations. While the parents' trust in Grace is improbable, it's an acceptable premise for the genre. Good recreational fare.
Pub Date: March 18, 1991
ISBN: 0-395-55696-1
Page Count: 132
Publisher: Clarion Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2000
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A well-loved author brings together, on a Maine vacation, characters from two of her books. Peter's parents have assured him that though Sheila ("The Great") Tubman and her family will be nearby, they'll have their own house; but instead, they find a shared arrangement in which the two families become thoroughly intertwined—which suits everyone but the curmudgeonly Peter. Irrepressible little brother Fudge, now five, is planning to marry Sheila, who agrees to babysit with Peter's toddler sister; there's a romance between the grandparents in the two families; and the wholesome good fun, including a neighborhood baseball game featuring an aging celebrity player, seems more important than Sheila and Peter's halfhearted vendetta. The story's a bit tame (no controversies here), but often amusingly true to life and with enough comic episodes to satisfy fans.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1990
ISBN: 0-525-44672-9
Page Count: -
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2000
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
1882
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-689-82979-5
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 1999
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