``Once there was a little girl called Birdy who paid a shilling for a living boy,'' begins this enchanting embroidery on the lore of selkies and other fairy creatures, sequel to Birdy and the Ghosties (1989). Though Birdy doesn't ``hold with'' buying a child, she saves Matthew—stunted and hungry—from the ``orphan master''; then, when the parson offers to pay for him and train his lovely voice for the choir, she refuses the shilling and sends him for free—a good thing, too, since when the seal-queen steals Matthew, she must, by the laws of human and fairy trade, give him back on demand. Still, the queen won't part with him, so Birdie strikes a bargain: the parson will train one of her pups to sing as beautifully as Matthew. So he does, though what to feed ``Pagan,'' or where to keep him (the answer—the church font—causes ``a scandal''), is a problem. Finally, Pagan's music—``terrible...[but] as beautiful as great tempests on stormy waters, or the love of the living for the dead'' is joined with Matthew's celestial singing like ``the whole creation'' before Matthew is released and Pagan returns to the sea. Lucid, graceful, and miraculously spare (in a few lines, four characters are epitomized with more insight than some authors achieve in an entire novel), the lively narrative alternates entrancing descriptions with witty, energetic dialogue. Marks's deftly understated watercolors reflect the tale's humor, as well as the awe and wonder of the sea. Despite an unfortunate low-budget format: perfection—and a delight. (Fiction. 5+)
Pub Date: April 30, 1993
ISBN: 0-374-34869-3
Page Count: 46
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1993
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The seemingly ageless Seeger brings back his renowned giant for another go in a tuneful tale that, like the art, is a bit sketchy, but chockful of worthy messages. Faced with yearly floods and droughts since they’ve cut down all their trees, the townsfolk decide to build a dam—but the project is stymied by a boulder that is too huge to move. Call on Abiyoyo, suggests the granddaughter of the man with the magic wand, then just “Zoop Zoop” him away again. But the rock that Abiyoyo obligingly flings aside smashes the wand. How to avoid Abiyoyo’s destruction now? Sing the monster to sleep, then make it a peaceful, tree-planting member of the community, of course. Seeger sums it up in a postscript: “every community must learn to manage its giants.” Hays, who illustrated the original (1986), creates colorful, if unfinished-looking, scenes featuring a notably multicultural human cast and a towering Cubist fantasy of a giant. The song, based on a Xhosa lullaby, still has that hard-to-resist sing-along potential, and the themes of waging peace, collective action, and the benefits of sound ecological practices are presented in ways that children will both appreciate and enjoy. (Picture book. 5-9)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-689-83271-0
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2001
Not for the faint-hearted—who are mostly adults anyway—but for stouthearted kids who love a brush with the sinister:...
A magnificently creepy fantasy pits a bright, bored little girl against a soul-eating horror that inhabits the reality right next door.
Coraline’s parents are loving, but really too busy to play with her, so she amuses herself by exploring her family’s new flat. A drawing-room door that opens onto a brick wall becomes a natural magnet for the curious little girl, and she is only half-surprised when, one day, the door opens onto a hallway and Coraline finds herself in a skewed mirror of her own flat, complete with skewed, button-eyed versions of her own parents. This is Gaiman’s (American Gods, 2001, etc.) first novel for children, and the author of the Sandman graphic novels here shows a sure sense of a child’s fears—and the child’s ability to overcome those fears. “I will be brave,” thinks Coraline. “No, I am brave.” When Coraline realizes that her other mother has not only stolen her real parents but has also stolen the souls of other children before her, she resolves to free her parents and to find the lost souls by matching her wits against the not-mother. The narrative hews closely to a child’s-eye perspective: Coraline never really tries to understand what has happened or to fathom the nature of the other mother; she simply focuses on getting her parents back and thwarting the other mother for good. Her ability to accept and cope with the surreality of the other flat springs from the child’s ability to accept, without question, the eccentricity and arbitrariness of her own—and every child’s own—reality. As Coraline’s quest picks up its pace, the parallel world she finds herself trapped in grows ever more monstrous, generating some deliciously eerie descriptive writing.
Not for the faint-hearted—who are mostly adults anyway—but for stouthearted kids who love a brush with the sinister: Coraline is spot on. (Fiction. 9-12)Pub Date: July 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-380-97778-8
Page Count: 176
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2002
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