A rare bird of a children’s book that encourages young readers to become environmentally conscious.
At once both familiar and exotic, the rural Pennsylvania world of 12-year-old Claire Belle, an obsessive birdwatcher, is anything but mundane.
Along with her rambunctious sheepdog Sammy, best friend Victor, a member of the Cochiti Indian tribe, and Jerry “The Chicken Man,” Claire embarks on a life-changing journey involving a red-railed hawk that just might hold the key to her biggest secret–her ability to attract whatever bird she happens to be wearing a picture of on her shirt that day. Butler’s greatest triumph is her ability to bring her young hyperaware heroine to life. Using all five senses, the author describes Claire’s passion for the beauty of nature, its vivid sounds and smells–of “hemlock needles, scenting the crisp air” and crows that chirp like “tiny honking cars”–as well as sights like “lattices of shadow” that lie on a “twisting lane.” Instead of creating an unreachable fantasy world, Butler shines a spotlight on everyday magic without shying away from life’s tribulations. A subplot reveals the tension between Claire and her best friend Victor, a video- gamer as much as Claire is a birder, who is involved in his own exploration of a new frontier that leaves Claire behind–a “mission to Mars” undertaken with her only enemy Billy, a bully with a glass eye and a drunken father who also crosses Claire’s path. The story moves swiftly and unpredictably, barreling over its few inconsistencies, like Victor being both a shy boy who eats lunch alone and a gregarious gamer, or Billy being both scared of guns and willing to shoot at a nest unprovoked, not to mention several distracting typos. In fact, the nonstop action-adventure is so detailed–from depictions of a widow’s bobby-pinned hair, to Claire’s big home that doubles as her single mom’s country store, to the reasons Claire chose her bedroom with its large maple tree outside the window–that the book’s unspecific title and bland cover art simply don’t do justice to the narrative. Nor does the book’s ending, which wraps up inorganically. It moves from Claire being held at gunpoint to becoming friends with her sworn enemy in the span of a few quick pages. Even Claire wouldn’t believe that.
A rare bird of a children’s book that encourages young readers to become environmentally conscious.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-9820342-0-0
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her...
Another middle-aged mom in a muddle.
After years of false starts and big hopes, Elizabeth’s ruggedly handsome husband Jack, a former football star, just landed a spot as a sportscaster on national news. He still loves her, even though much younger women are giving him come-hither looks. Heck, he doesn’t want to betray the love of his life after she helped him kick drugs and stuck by him even when he was a struggling has-been. And won’t it seem hypocritical if he fools around with his sexy assistant while he does in-depth reporting on a rape case involving a famous basketball center? Well, he fools around anyway. Elizabeth, nicknamed Birdie, knows nothing of this, but she withdraws from Jack when her hard-drinking, salt-of-the-earth father has a stroke and dies. Now no one will call her “sugar beet” ever again. Time to return home to Tennessee and contend with Anita, the sort-of-evil stepmother so trashy she wears pink puffy slippers all day long. Naturally, it turns out that Anita actually has a heart of gold and knows a few things about Birdie’s dead mother that were hushed up for years. Mom was an artist, just like Birdie, and an old scandal comes to light as Anita unrolls a vibrant canvas that portrays her secret lover. Perhaps, Birdie muses, her mother died of heartbreak, never having followed her true love or developed her talent. Has she, too, compromised everything she holds dear? Hoping to find out, Birdie joins a support group that promises to reconnect confused women with their passion. She and Jack separate, prompting a how-dare-you fit from their grown daughters. Will Birdie fly her empty nest? Will she go back to college for a degree in art? Will her brooding watercolors ever sell?
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her previous tales (Summer Island, 2001, etc.).Pub Date: July 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-345-45071-X
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2002
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