Never has music wrought more profound change than in this engaging bucolic tale from the author of Some Fine Grampa! (1995). Hallie and David Kennedy’s new cow Cassie won’t give milk. Even the vet doesn’t know what to do, but retired librarian Vivian Keats, who always does, suggests playing music. The young folks’ father, Myles, hauls out his short-wave radio (this is Cape Breton Island, where the airwaves carry limited musical choices), and tunes in to a classical station. The results are as unexpected as they are immediate. Cassie begins to talk, and not just in monosyllables either: after hearing Beethoven’s “Pastoral” symphony, she rhapsodizes, “ ‘How does he feel so much? And then once he feels these things, how does he make us feel along with him? How does he make sound tell us about open fields and green grass and hills and trees and streams and thunder and lightning?’ ” And so on. In fact, Cassie becomes insufferable on the subject, urgently questioning her human associates, demanding to hear live music, and then to play it herself. But what instrument can a cow play? After much experimentation, the Kennedys, patiently putting up with Cassie’s sulks and rages, concoct a giant keyboard from plastic tarps and electrical wires, and even find music teachers for their budding artiste. Weeks of dedicated practice later, Cassie is ready for her public debut. Her performance of an obscure Beethoven rondo at the local high school is a smash hit, earning her an invitation to play with a professional orchestra in a real concert hall. That too is a triumph—until the crushing review appears in the next morning’s paper. Arkin plays the “prima donna” trope with a sure hand and hilarious results, but his bovine protagonist is saved from caricature by the evident depth and sincerity of her response to music. Whether readers’ acquaintance with great music is intimate or just nodding, this epiphanic episode is sure to incite laughter and deeper thoughts. (Fiction. 10-13)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-7868-0564-1
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Hyperion
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2000
BOOK REVIEW
Bishop’s spectacular photographs of the tiny red-eyed tree frog defeat an incidental text from Cowley (Singing Down the Rain, 1997, etc.). The frog, only two inches long, is enormous in this title; it appears along with other nocturnal residents of the rain forests of Central America, including the iguana, ant, katydid, caterpillar, and moth. In a final section, Cowley explains how small the frog is and aspects of its life cycle. The main text, however, is an afterthought to dramatic events in the photos, e.g., “But the red-eyed tree frog has been asleep all day. It wakes up hungry. What will it eat? Here is an iguana. Frogs do not eat iguanas.” Accompanying an astonishing photograph of the tree frog leaping away from a boa snake are three lines (“The snake flicks its tongue. It tastes frog in the air. Look out, frog!”) that neither advance nor complement the action. The layout employs pale and deep green pages and typeface, and large jewel-like photographs in which green and red dominate. The combination of such visually sophisticated pages and simplistic captions make this a top-heavy, unsatisfying title. (Picture book. 7-9)
Pub Date: March 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-590-87175-7
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1999
Themes of freedom and responsibility twine between the lines of this short but heavy novel from the author of Because of Winn-Dixie (2000). Three months after his mother's death, Rob and his father are living in a small-town Florida motel, each nursing sharp, private pain. On the same day Rob has two astonishing encounters: first, he stumbles upon a caged tiger in the woods behind the motel; then he meets Sistine, a new classmate responding to her parents' breakup with ready fists and a big chip on her shoulder. About to burst with his secret, Rob confides in Sistine, who instantly declares that the tiger must be freed. As Rob quickly develops a yen for Sistine's company that gives her plenty of emotional leverage, and the keys to the cage almost literally drop into his hands, credible plotting plainly takes a back seat to character delineation here. And both struggle for visibility beneath a wagonload of symbol and metaphor: the real tiger (and the inevitable recitation of Blake's poem); the cage; Rob's dream of Sistine riding away on the beast's back; a mysterious skin condition on Rob's legs that develops after his mother's death; a series of wooden figurines that he whittles; a larger-than-life African-American housekeeper at the motel who dispenses wisdom with nearly every utterance; and the climax itself, which is signaled from the start. It's all so freighted with layers of significance that, like Lois Lowry's Gathering Blue (2000), Anne Mazer's Oxboy (1995), or, further back, Julia Cunningham's Dorp Dead (1965), it becomes more an exercise in analysis than a living, breathing story. Still, the tiger, "burning bright" with magnificent, feral presence, does make an arresting central image. (Fiction. 10-12)
Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-7636-0911-0
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2001
BOOK TO SCREEN
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