An intermittently compelling debut enhanced by its rural Midwest setting.
A 12-year-old girl who’s been mute since her mother’s death discovers and bonds with a family of swans and struggles to adjust to her new life.
Her mother’s partner, Ray, says her death was accidental. Rejecting his efforts to spare her, Dulcie knows her mother’s struggle with depression defeated her. Dulcie feels responsible—she died while Dulcie competed in the 1977 state spelling-bee finals. Ray takes Dulcie to live in rural Ohio with her mother’s estranged sister, Aunt Bernie, whose life revolves around Redeemer Baptist Church. Dulcie likes Rev. Love but loathes his youth group’s bullies. One day Dulcie follows a swan and discovers a hidden pond containing a swan’s nest with an adult pair and five cygnets, a secret known only to Reverend Love and Evangeline Tucker, the new choir director, who puts Dulcie and Faith, a homeless girl sheltered by the Loves, to work sewing choir robes. (The church plays a key role throughout.) Though Dulcie’s beliefs remain ambiguous, most adults are devout. Some are racist. The only nonwhite character, saintly African-American Evangeline, has individuality but also serves as a bias-detection device. Characterization skews blunt and schematic. Secondary characters such as Ray and his new girlfriend are more nuanced. The strongest moments bring the natural world and its creatures, feathered and human, to life through Dulcie’s observant eyes.
An intermittently compelling debut enhanced by its rural Midwest setting. (Historical fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: June 4, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4814-5283-0
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Beach Lane/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: March 26, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2019
The three way chats, in which they are joined by other animals, about web spinning, themselves, other humans—are as often...
A successful juvenile by the beloved New Yorker writer portrays a farm episode with an imaginative twist that makes a poignant, humorous story of a pig, a spider and a little girl.
Young Fern Arable pleads for the life of runt piglet Wilbur and gets her father to sell him to a neighbor, Mr. Zuckerman. Daily, Fern visits the Zuckermans to sit and muse with Wilbur and with the clever pen spider Charlotte, who befriends him when he is lonely and downcast. At the news of Wilbur's forthcoming slaughter, campaigning Charlotte, to the astonishment of people for miles around, spins words in her web. "Some Pig" comes first. Then "Terrific"—then "Radiant". The last word, when Wilbur is about to win a show prize and Charlotte is about to die from building her egg sac, is "Humble". And as the wonderful Charlotte does die, the sadness is tempered by the promise of more spiders next spring.
The three way chats, in which they are joined by other animals, about web spinning, themselves, other humans—are as often informative as amusing, and the whole tenor of appealing wit and pathos will make fine entertainment for reading aloud, too.Pub Date: Oct. 15, 1952
ISBN: 978-0-06-026385-0
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1952
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
Telgemeier’s bold colors, superior visual storytelling, and unusual subject matter will keep readers emotionally engaged and...
Catrina narrates the story of her mixed-race (Latino/white) family’s move from Southern California to Bahía de la Luna on the Northern California coast.
Dad has a new job, but it’s little sister Maya’s lungs that motivate the move: she has had cystic fibrosis since birth—a degenerative breathing condition. Despite her health, Maya loves adventure, even if her lungs suffer for it and even when Cat must follow to keep her safe. When Carlos, a tall, brown, and handsome teen Ghost Tour guide introduces the sisters to the Bahía ghosts—most of whom were Spanish-speaking Mexicans when alive—they fascinate Maya and she them, but the terrified Cat wants only to get herself and Maya back to safety. When the ghost adventure leads to Maya’s hospitalization, Cat blames both herself and Carlos, which makes seeing him at school difficult. As Cat awakens to the meaning of Halloween and Day of the Dead in this strange new home, she comes to understand the importance of the ghosts both to herself and to Maya. Telgemeier neatly balances enough issues that a lesser artist would split them into separate stories and delivers as much delight textually as visually. The backmatter includes snippets from Telgemeier’s sketchbook and a photo of her in Día makeup.
Telgemeier’s bold colors, superior visual storytelling, and unusual subject matter will keep readers emotionally engaged and unable to put down this compelling tale. (Graphic fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Sept. 13, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-545-54061-2
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: July 1, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2016
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