by Alexander Cramer ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 1, 1994
A savory sequence of 11 supernatural tales-within-a-tale, told by former residents of a remote mountain settlement. Sitting at what they thought was a hobo fire, two lost travelers hear dim figures around them telling stories: of Thomas Jefferson Loudermilk, ``The Boy Who Stole the Moon''; of 16-year-old Emily Carlyle's sad/happy death; of Letitia Weller, a female Bluebeard; of Betsy Davison, who (in saving her father's farm from a card shark) becomes a ``Sorceress's Apprentice''; of blind Jack Tar, who learns to fiddle from the best (``Call Me Scratch''); and of young Hunter Lee, pulled back 50 years to the bloody battle of Shiloh. Aside from some obtrusive rough language, Cramer tells a seamless story, weaving together believable, independent characters, spine- chilling twists, and wonderfully wacky comedy (a coal miner helps fix the immense ``Wheels of the World'' with a pocket watch and the transmission from a '57 Chevy; a gifted banjo-picker is guided by the rotund ghost of Elvis when she steals Charon's boat to search for her dead husband on ``Another Shore''). Readers who found Judith Gorog's masterful On Meeting Witches At Wells (1991) to their taste will happily devour this inventive first book. (Fiction. 11-15)
Pub Date: April 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-684-19704-9
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1994
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by Jack Gantos ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 1, 1998
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
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by Carol Matas ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 1, 1993
After witnessing the rising tide of anti-Semitism in Nazi Germany, Daniel is suddenly transported, at age 14, from his comfortable life in Frankfurt to a Polish ghetto, then to Auschwitz and Buchenwald—losing most of his family along the way, seeing Nazi brutality of both the casual and the calculated kind, and recording atrocities with a smuggled camera (``What has happened to me?...Who am I? Where am I going?''). Matas, explicating an exhibit of photos and other materials at the new United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, creates a convincing composite youth and experience—fictional but carefully based on survivors' accounts. It's a savage story with no attempt to soften the culpability of the German people; Daniel's profound anger is easier to understand than is his father's compassion or his sister's plea to ``chose love. Always choose love.'' Daniel survives to be reunited, after the war, with his wife-to-be, but his dying friend's last word echoes beyond the happy ending: ``Remember...'' An unusual undertaking, effectively carried out. Chronology; glossary. (Fiction. 11-14)
Pub Date: April 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-590-46920-7
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1993
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