With the help of a dead magician, a quick-witted young orphan foils a dastardly plot—in this breathless new adventure from the author of The Whipping Boy (1986, Newbery Award). When Touch pays a car on his great-uncle and sole surviving relative, Judge Henry Wigglesforth, he finds himself under pressure to sign over a previously unknown inheritance from his roving father. Wigglesforth is also leaning on pretty Miss Sally Hoskins to sell her Red Raven Inn for a pittance—rumor has it that a gold-toothed guest was murdered there, and business has fallen off. Meanwhile, Wigglesforth's sinister confederate Otis Cratt (why does he keep his face muffled?) is lurking about, intent on a certain bag of Pacific Island pearls. Touch is never one to let injustice go unchallenged; enlisting the aid of the ghost of The Great Chaffalo, a local magician, he tricks Cratt, stymies Wigglesforth, and saves the pearls as well as the Red Raven. Once again, Fleischman's storytelling is grandly melodramatic; a clear line separates good from evil, scenes are set with brisk economy, and characters speak their lines with grace and emphasis. Sis' dark, posed, slightly distorted figures add to these theatrics an undercurrent of mystery and a "Touch" of wit. Outstanding.
Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 0-688-09441-4
Page Count: 96
Publisher: Greenwillow Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2000
Troubled teen meets totemic catalyst in Mikaelsen’s (Petey, 1998, etc.) earnest tribute to Native American spirituality. Fifteen-year-old Cole is cocky, embittered, and eaten up by anger at his abusive parents. After repeated skirmishes with the law, he finally faces jail time when he viciously beats a classmate. Cole’s parole officer offers him an alternative—Circle Justice, an innovative justice program based on Native traditions. Sentenced to a year on an uninhabited Arctic island under the supervision of Edwin, a Tlingit elder, Cole provokes an attack from a titanic white “Spirit Bear” while attempting escape. Although permanently crippled by the near-death experience, he is somehow allowed yet another stint on the island. Through Edwin’s patient tutoring, Cole gradually masters his rage, but realizes that he needs to help his former victims to complete his own healing. Mikaelsen paints a realistic portrait of an unlikable young punk, and if Cole’s turnaround is dramatic, it is also convincingly painful and slow. Alas, the rest of the characters are cardboard caricatures: the brutal, drunk father, the compassionate, perceptive parole officer, and the stoic and cryptic Native mentor. Much of the plot stretches credulity, from Cole’s survival to his repeated chances at rehabilitation to his victim being permitted to share his exile. Nonetheless, teens drawn by the brutality of Cole’s adventures, and piqued by Mikaelsen’s rather muscular mysticism, might absorb valuable lessons on anger management and personal responsibility. As melodramatic and well-meaning as the teens it targets. (Fiction. YA)
Pub Date: Feb. 28, 2001
ISBN: 0-380-97744-3
Page Count: 256
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2001
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
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