A teenager learns some unpleasant truths about her parents in this deceptively light-toned portrait of a two-member family. Although constant rehearsals and several part-time jobs keep her mother, Susan, so much on the fly that they seldom eat together and only communicate with notes, Danny still feels close to her; when she finds out from others that her mother has lost her bread-and-butter TV-commercial job and is waitressing to make ends meet, Danny is mystified and angry at the deception. As a stubborn silence grows between them, Danny mourns the lack of any other family member to talk to. She knows her father only from a photograph, her mother's talk of courtship and divorce, and her own daydreams. She tracks him down, resulting in a reunion that's anything but the loving scene she had envisioned: In a series of painful revelations she learns that she's the result of a summer fling, that her parents never married, and that they had agreed to go their separate ways after her mother refused to have an abortion. Griffin (Rainy Season, 1996) creates a pair of appealing characters: the elder breezy, vivacious, and funny; the younger quieter, taller, and in several ways the more mature of the two. Their chemistry animates a plot that could have easily turned soapy and leaden. Some comic twists also lighten the load, as does an upbeat ending and Danny and Susan's emergence from the crisis even closer than they were before. (Fiction. 11-13)
Pub Date: May 1, 1997
ISBN: 0-7868-0347-9
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Hyperion
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1997
Year-round fun.
Set in 1937 during the so-called “Roosevelt recession,” tight times compel Mary Alice, a Chicago girl, to move in with her grandmother, who lives in a tiny Illinois town so behind the times that it doesn’t “even have a picture show.”
This winning sequel takes place several years after A Long Way From Chicago (1998) leaves off, once again introducing the reader to Mary Alice, now 15, and her Grandma Dowdel, an indomitable, idiosyncratic woman who despite her hard-as-nails exterior is able to see her granddaughter with “eyes in the back of her heart.” Peck’s slice-of-life novel doesn’t have much in the way of a sustained plot; it could almost be a series of short stories strung together, but the narrative never flags, and the book, populated with distinctive, soulful characters who run the gamut from crazy to conventional, holds the reader’s interest throughout. And the vignettes, some involving a persnickety Grandma acting nasty while accomplishing a kindness, others in which she deflates an overblown ego or deals with a petty rivalry, are original and wildly funny. The arena may be a small hick town, but the battle for domination over that tiny turf is fierce, and Grandma Dowdel is a canny player for whom losing isn’t an option. The first-person narration is infused with rich, colorful language—“She was skinnier than a toothpick with termites”—and Mary Alice’s shrewd, prickly observations: “Anybody who thinks small towns are friendlier than big cities lives in a big city.”
Year-round fun. (Fiction. 11-13)Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2000
ISBN: 978-0-8037-2518-8
Page Count: 144
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2000
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
If Rotten Ralph were a boy instead of a cat, he might be Joey, the hyperactive hero of Gantos's new book, except that Joey is never bad on purpose. In the first-person narration, it quickly becomes clear that he can't help himself; he's so wound up that he not only practically bounces off walls, he literally swallows his house key (which he wears on a string around his neck and which he pull back up, complete with souvenirs of the food he just ate). Gantos's straightforward view of what it's like to be Joey is so honest it hurts. Joey has been abandoned by his alcoholic father and, for a time, by his mother (who also drinks); his grandmother, just as hyperactive as he is, abuses Joey while he's in her care. One mishap after another leads Joey first from his regular classroom to special education classes and then to a special education school. With medication, counseling, and positive reinforcement, Joey calms down. Despite a lighthearted title and jacket painting, the story is simultaneously comic and horrific; Gantos takes readers right inside a human whirlwind where the ride is bumpy and often frightening, especially for Joey. But a river of compassion for the characters runs through the pages, not only for Joey but for his overextended mom and his usually patient, always worried (if only for their safety) teachers. Mature readers will find this harsh tale softened by unusual empathy and leavened by genuinely funny events. (Fiction. 11-13)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-374-33664-4
Page Count: 154
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1998
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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