In the summer of 1910, when cars begin to replace horses, and librarians still check for clean hands, New Yorker Dossi finds herself bound for a small town in Vermont, courtesy of the Fresh Air Fund, the charity for poor city children. The “city girl who doesn’t know a weed from a window” is inducted into a world of milking cows and picking berries, not to mention experiencing mosquitoes and (unbelievably) dew for the first time. The familiar plot line has Dossi learning about egg yolks and burning wood, ice houses and chicken coops; she mistakes fireflies for sparks and eats raw rhubarb from the garden. Tension mounts as Dossi tries to win the affection of tight-lipped Emma, the farmer’s daughter who leaves Dossi’s precious library book out in the rain. Not only is the landscape unfamiliar to Dossi, but the expressions of country folk sound strange to her ear, and her host family eats ham when Dossi’s religion forbids it. Postcards and letters to her sister Ruthi, as well as inscriptions from Dossi’s autograph album, are interspersed between chapters, breaking up the rather formal tone. Although Dossi is 12, she sounds younger, making this book suitable for fans of the American Girls audience. Pastoral woodcuts garnish each chapter with old-fashioned country still lifes. (Fiction. 8-10)
Pub Date: April 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-688-15334-8
Page Count: 148
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1998
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Alert readers will find the implicit morals: know your audience, mostly, but also never underestimate the power of “rock”...
The theme of persistence (for better or worse) links four tales of magic, trickery, and near disasters.
Lachenmeyer freely borrows familiar folkloric elements, subjecting them to mildly comical twists. In the nearly wordless “Hip Hop Wish,” a frog inadvertently rubs a magic lamp and finds itself saddled with an importunate genie eager to shower it with inappropriate goods and riches. In the title tale, an increasingly annoyed music-hating witch transforms a persistent minstrel into a still-warbling cow, horse, sheep, goat, pig, duck, and rock in succession—then is horrified to catch herself humming a tune. Athesius the sorcerer outwits Warthius, a rival trying to steal his spells via a parrot, by casting silly ones in Ig-pay Atin-lay in the third episode, and in the finale, a painter’s repeated efforts to create a flattering portrait of an ogre king nearly get him thrown into a dungeon…until he suddenly understands what an ogre’s idea of “flattering” might be. The narratives, dialogue, and sound effects leave plenty of elbow room in Blocker’s big, brightly colored panels for the expressive animal and human(ish) figures—most of the latter being light skinned except for the golden genie, the blue ogre, and several people of color in the “Sorcerer’s New Pet.”
Alert readers will find the implicit morals: know your audience, mostly, but also never underestimate the power of “rock” music. (Graphic short stories. 8-10)Pub Date: June 18, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-59643-750-0
Page Count: 112
Publisher: First Second
Review Posted Online: April 27, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2019
In these 12 retellings, the Immortals come across as unusually benign. Dionysius at first suggests to King Midas that he give his excess wealth to the poor, for instance; the troubles that Pandora releases are originally imprisoned in the box by Prometheus’s brother Epimetheus out of compassion for humankind; and it’s Persephone herself who begs for a compromise that will allow her to stay with her beloved Hades for six months out of every year. Kimmel relates each tale in easy, natural-sounding language. And even though his Andromeda looks more Celtic than Ethiopian (as the oldest versions of the story have it), Montserrat’s figures combine appropriate monumentality with an appealing expressiveness. The stories are all familiar and available in more comprehensive collections, but the colorful illustrations and spacious page design make this a good choice for shared reading. (foreword) (Nonfiction. 8-10)
Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2008
ISBN: 978-1-4169-1534-8
Page Count: 112
Publisher: McElderry
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2007
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