In this oddly distant disaster tale, two young people from opposite sides of the socioeconomic tracks are caught in the devastating Galveston Hurricane of 1900. The storm takes a long time to arrive; meanwhile, suspicious of her father’s motives, Maggie responds with jealousy and cutting words to overtures of friendship from Felipe, a quiet, gentle orphan hired to do yard work. Come the catastrophe, the two are thrown together, and after temporarily rescuing a group of orphans (all, except for one of Felipe’s twin little sisters, eventually drown), then surviving the devastation, Maggie accepts Felipe into the family as readily as her father does. As Maggie not only behaves badly toward Felipe, but also torments the household’s cook and condescendingly (in Felipe’s view—and Myers presents no clear evidence to the contrary) gives Felipe’s sisters cast-off dolls, she comes across as particularly unlikable. Moreover, the author is so parsimonious with physical description that readers will have difficulty visualizing Galveston before and after the storm—or, for that matter, during, as despite occasional references to howling wind and violent rain the characters are evidently able to converse at normal volume. Sherry Garland’s Silent Storm (1993) is a more compelling fictional account of the hurricane. (Fiction. 10-13)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-8027-8787-8
Page Count: 132
Publisher: Walker
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2001
Rich and strange (and kitted out with an eye-catching cover), but stronger in the set pieces than the internal logic.
Chainani works an elaborate sea change akin to Gregory Maguire’s Wicked (1995), though he leaves the waters muddied.
Every four years, two children, one regarded as particularly nice and the other particularly nasty, are snatched from the village of Gavaldon by the shadowy School Master to attend the divided titular school. Those who survive to graduate become major or minor characters in fairy tales. When it happens to sweet, Disney princess–like Sophie and her friend Agatha, plain of features, sour of disposition and low of self-esteem, they are both horrified to discover that they’ve been dropped not where they expect but at Evil and at Good respectively. Gradually—too gradually, as the author strings out hundreds of pages of Hogwarts-style pranks, classroom mishaps and competitions both academic and romantic—it becomes clear that the placement wasn’t a mistake at all. Growing into their true natures amid revelations and marked physical changes, the two spark escalating rivalry between the wings of the school. This leads up to a vicious climactic fight that sees Good and Evil repeatedly switching sides. At this point, readers are likely to feel suddenly left behind, as, thanks to summary deus ex machina resolutions, everything turns out swell(ish).
Rich and strange (and kitted out with an eye-catching cover), but stronger in the set pieces than the internal logic. (Fantasy. 11-13)Pub Date: May 14, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-06-210489-2
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Feb. 12, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2013
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BOOK TO SCREEN
Remarking that ``nothing about the weather is very simple,'' Simon goes on to describe how the sun, atmosphere, earth's rotation, ground cover, altitude, pollution, and other factors influence it; briefly, he also tells how weather balloons gather information. Even for this outstanding author, it's a tough, complex topic, and he's not entirely successful in simplifying it; moreover, the import of the striking uncaptioned color photos here isn't always clear. One passage—``Cumulus clouds sometimes build up into towering masses called cumulus congestus, or swelling cumulus, which may turn into cumulonimbus clouds''—is superimposed on a blue-gray, cloud-covered landscape. But which kind of clouds are these? Another photo, in blue-black and white, shows what might be precipitation in the upper atmosphere, or rain falling on a darkened landscape, or...? Generally competent and certainly attractive, but not Simon's best. (Nonfiction. 10-12)
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-688-10546-7
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1993
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