Amanda K. Woods, 12, is a girl to like’she just doesn’t know it yet. She’s quirky, serious, impulsive, imaginative, perceptive, smart, and now, sharp, thanks to the addition of the K that stands like a sword flashing confidently in the middle of her name. In an opening scene, Amanda says good-bye to Lyle Leveridge, former neighbor and friend who leaves behind, at her suggestion, the legacy of his right hand, which she “exchanges” with her own in a tingling, did-it-really-happen episode. That hand seems to give her special powers when it comes to baking muffins to her mother’s specifications, writing letters to a French pen pal, seeking the advice of a yogi, and more, in Rome, Wisconsin, circa 1950. Casting aside her mother’s meticulous criterion, older sister Margaret’s Dale Carnegie—inspired thoughts, and the dubious punditry of women’s magazines, Amanda learns to see through her own eyes, speak “her own real thoughts.” Cameron (More Stories Huey Tells, 1997, etc.) avoids grand revelations in favor of singular insights that affirm girlhood without self-consciousness. As Amanda moves from alone to alive, she becomes strong, but not impossibly so, realizing that her special powers are those inside her, not borrowed from the Lone Ranger or a boy’s hand. Amanda is the story, and she’s as funny as she is wise. (Fiction. 10-12)
Pub Date: April 21, 1998
ISBN: 0-374-36702-7
Page Count: 201
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1998
Hopping aboard the bandwagon behind its predecessor, Measle and the Wrathmonk (2004), this Brit-flavored burlesque pits young Measle Stubbs and his doughty little dog Tinker against a crew of wildly inept wrathmonks, or wizards-gone-to-the-bad, led by the last of the dragon-riding, long-ago-defeated Dragondons. Measle’s Mom being a rare reservoir of magical “mana,” the Dragodon has her snatched, intending to use her power to raise up his immense, dormant dragon and escape his underground prison. Pocketing some magic jellybeans, off hies Measle to the rescue, led by a convenient clue to a shutdown amusement park where drawn-out, increasingly large-scale chases and battles await, before the requisite escape and the dealing out of appropriate comeuppances. Thickly padded with repetitive slapstick scenes of the cardboard villains displaying their stupidity and explaining their intentions at length, this pedestrian knockoff makes stale reading next to the better imagined fantasies of Debi Gliori, Lemony Snicket, or just about anyone else. (Fantasy. 10-12)
Pub Date: April 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-06-058688-5
Page Count: 352
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2005
BOOK REVIEW
This stand-alone sequel to Prairie Summer (2002), a shorter chapter book with illustrations, continues in a longer story that features ten-year-old Rachel, not only anxious about the new school year, but why her father appears sad every time he looks at her new baby brother. Rachel soon learns her parents’ secret: Their first child, also a son, died before his christening and their Lutheran minister refused to give the baby a Christian burial. The girl comes to terms with her own sense of divine salvation and sparks events that lead to the family’s healing and the reburial of her brother with a new funeral service. Based on a similar situation in Geisert’s own family, the story also evokes a strong sense of place and time—1950s South Dakota—and a disappearing way of life. This isn’t for every reader, but for children like Rachel, who care deeply about matters of the heart and soul. (Fiction. 10-12)
Pub Date: April 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-618-47899-X
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2005
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