A fanciful read that remains loyal to its noble principles.
Book lovers who can change into dogs search for an ancient library in Polo’s follow-up to Retrieved (2012).
Warm and intuitive, Bliss Light is the children’s librarian at the Shipsfeather Public Library in Ohio. She’s also a magical dog-shifter, able to change at will into a sleek white greyhound. In Shipsfeather, she’s joined by a cast of similarly gifted people who fight for knowledge and literacy against power-hungry werewolves. A more immediate problem for Bliss, however, is changing from her dog form back to her human form. Only in the presence of friend and fellow shifter Harry (who’s an English sheepdog/werewolf mix) can she focus enough to change successfully. Harry, sensing that he and Bliss have the potential to be more than friends, joins her on a winding road trip to soothe her spiritual restlessness; they’re also searching for the mythic Library of the Ancients, which supposedly houses manuscripts on the dog-shifters’ origins. In their way are the conniving werewolf lobbyist Sybilla Dinzelbacher Romano and her wolf-shifting goon, Blaze. Besides being Harry’s ex-wife, Sybilla is also the daughter of Sen. Romano, who’s pushing for legislation that will hire more dogcatchers nationwide. While heading west through sacred park sites, can Bliss and Harry stay ahead of the dog snatchers already hunting them? Author Polo does an excellent job organizing the details of her inviting series for new and returning readers. Reformed Harry, after all, had a “role in burning the town’s old Carnegie library,” among other attempts at violence. The werewolves here suffer a madness not limited to urban fantasy—distaste for intellectualism: “The increasing dog population is destroying the fabric of our country,” says Sybilla. Yet Bliss and Harry’s adventure avoids getting bogged down in political parallels. New Age elements, snippets of cleverness—e.g., the “bowser browser, Zoogle”—and dogs in realistic danger find an appealing balance. At its core, the narrative illustrates how some kennels and breeders abuse animals but also how kindness can heal humans and dogs—and maybe even cats.
A fanciful read that remains loyal to its noble principles.Pub Date: July 7, 2013
ISBN: 978-0985774820
Page Count: 264
Publisher: Blue Merle Publishing
Review Posted Online: Dec. 24, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her...
Another middle-aged mom in a muddle.
After years of false starts and big hopes, Elizabeth’s ruggedly handsome husband Jack, a former football star, just landed a spot as a sportscaster on national news. He still loves her, even though much younger women are giving him come-hither looks. Heck, he doesn’t want to betray the love of his life after she helped him kick drugs and stuck by him even when he was a struggling has-been. And won’t it seem hypocritical if he fools around with his sexy assistant while he does in-depth reporting on a rape case involving a famous basketball center? Well, he fools around anyway. Elizabeth, nicknamed Birdie, knows nothing of this, but she withdraws from Jack when her hard-drinking, salt-of-the-earth father has a stroke and dies. Now no one will call her “sugar beet” ever again. Time to return home to Tennessee and contend with Anita, the sort-of-evil stepmother so trashy she wears pink puffy slippers all day long. Naturally, it turns out that Anita actually has a heart of gold and knows a few things about Birdie’s dead mother that were hushed up for years. Mom was an artist, just like Birdie, and an old scandal comes to light as Anita unrolls a vibrant canvas that portrays her secret lover. Perhaps, Birdie muses, her mother died of heartbreak, never having followed her true love or developed her talent. Has she, too, compromised everything she holds dear? Hoping to find out, Birdie joins a support group that promises to reconnect confused women with their passion. She and Jack separate, prompting a how-dare-you fit from their grown daughters. Will Birdie fly her empty nest? Will she go back to college for a degree in art? Will her brooding watercolors ever sell?
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her previous tales (Summer Island, 2001, etc.).Pub Date: July 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-345-45071-X
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2002
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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