"Though weighed down by an excess of historical detail (not to mention a substantial afterword and bibliography), the tale does bring this great writer closer to his modern audience of Best Beloveds, without idealizing either the man or his now-offensive politics. (Fiction. 10-12)"
Writer Rudyard Kipling's ill-fated attempt to settle down in his American wife's small Vermont town gets a worshipful once-over through the eyes of (fictional) young Mary Sadie—dubbed "Kitty" by her father after the cat killed by curiosity.
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"It's a story worth telling, but because the two renditions cover largely the same territory, consider this one worthy, but not essential. (afterword) (Picture book/biography. 7-9)"
Writing in blank verse for no discernible reason, Borden profiles John Harrison, monomaniacal inventor of a "chronometer" that revolutionized navigation at sea.
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"Blegvad's detailed watercolor drawings of Mary's hard work and her increasingly frazzled appearance in the face of her husband's idleness will delight children, whose sense of poetic justice will be grandly satisfied on the final page. (Picture book. 4-8)"
Pity poor Mary, whose frenzied efforts to prepare for the onslaught of winter leave her red-faced and exhausted!
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"The understated message, however, that prejudice is seldom solely the province of the hateful, is well worth the effort. (b&w illustrations, not seen) (Fiction. 8-11)"
A moody, bittersweet novella about the difficulties of Sylvie's family in their first outing away from the city, to a cousin's vacant house at the beach.
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"Blegvad's gentle watercolors plant clues and false leads with a light touch. (Picture book. 4-6)"
The answers to Spires's poetic puzzlesone riddle per pageare easy to guess, but there's still a lot to linger over and reflect on in this quietly humorous collection. ``When you leave I get bored/and pretend I'm a room,'' says the mirror; the candle's ``life is as long as an evening''; trees ``have black bones and pale green flesh'' and a starfish can ``never see what I am named after.'' There's an egg that's hardboiled about being ``cracked and beaten'' and a mosquito whose buzz is not worse than his bite.
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From a noted Danish-born poet (d. 1988), a last collection of neatly crafted verse—small poems about small things, mostly insects and the like.
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"Though skeptics will remain unconvinced by the final bit of family faith healing which absolves Eleanor's guilt over having caused injury to a friend, it's a mind-bending experience to follow her through the fast-paced revelations of her magic lantern catechism."
Reared in the intellectual atmosphere of Concord, Massachusetts by two parents seeped in the abstractions of transcendentalism, it's no wonder that Eleanor turns to the sepia-tinted fantasy world of the stereoscope (a present from her Hindu uncle Prince Krishna) for answers to her questions about guilt, redemption and the nature of the hereafter.
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"Children will remember the giant cash register (WHAT ARE YOU WORTH) and the paper doll party (MAKE NEW WORLDS) and grave little Georgie, the aspiring reader (and the tingling illustrations) much longer than the all-too-obtrusive MESSAGE."
Three characters in search of themselves, with a swing to transport them and Mrs. Truth to light the last stretch: an allegorical fantasy in shifting dimensions.
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