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THE BURNT STICK

Name: THE BURNT STICK
Author: Anthony Hill
ISBN: 0-395-73974-8

by Anthony Hill & illustrated by Mark Sofilas ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 1, 1995

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Following an Australian custom practiced until relatively recently, a light-skinned boy is taken from his aboriginal mother to be raised ``as white'' in a poignant but fragmentary episode. John Jagamarra is almost five when the Big Man from Welfare comes to camp; his mother desperately smears his skin with soot, but the Big Man is only temporarily fooled. John is transported to the Pearl Bay Mission For Aboriginal Children; he is taught to speak English, wear clothes, and attend church, but never forgets where he came from, or his mother, or even the stories told by the old men around the campfire. Hill's controlled, understated tone is reflected in Sofilas's subdued charcoal drawings; shadowy, unclothed figures sit quietly or stand together gracefully. In several scenes there are no people at all, only a rocky landscape, or a bark painting, or the remains of a fire. The brief story flashes back and forth in time and ends in an abrupt way, more symbolic than believable; years later, John returns to the abandoned camp with his own son, rubs his skin with ashes, and vows never to stop searching for his people. That vow comes late, considering how the author has prepared readers for it; John's adult life is left a blank. Good background for a novel; not developed enough on its own. Its lyricism may be lost on many, although some scenes reverberate beyond the last page. (Fiction. 9-11)

Pub Date: Aug. 1, 1995

ISBN: 0-395-73974-8

Page Count: 53

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1995

Categories:

CHILDREN'S GENERAL CHILDREN'S

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WHERE HEROES HIDE

by Helen Recorvits ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 9, 2002

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Ten-year-old Junior’s summer vacation promises to be as quiet as American suburbia was in 1956. He’s trying to save money for a bike while enjoying outings with his friends, and hoping that his father will stay in a good mood. Junior’s father is a WWII veteran who is carrying the unresolved burden of a traumatic wartime experience. He vents his anger against one of his son’s friends who has polio by forbidding his son to play with him. Never mind that Junior has had his vaccine and that the polio is no longer contagious. When he comes home early from work one day and finds the boys together in the backyard, his anger escalates into violence. Only when Junior accidentally uncovers a box with his father’s war mementos, including a Silver Star, does Dad begin to talk about the death of a close friend in a fiery plane crash. It takes a fire in the town and Dad’s dramatic rescue of a boy trapped on a second-floor porch to cure the post-traumatic stress disorder. It is difficult to accept that this father is so violently intolerant of polio and is able to undergo so quick a cure for his wartime stress. There have not been children’s stories dealing with this degree of PTSD in WWII vets. Perhaps another one will be more successful. (Fiction. 9-11)

Pub Date: May 9, 2002

ISBN: 0-374-33057-3

Page Count: 144

Publisher: Frances Foster/Farrar, Straus & Giroux

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2002

Categories:

CHILDREN'S GENERAL CHILDREN'S

- BOOK REVIEW
YOON AND THE JADE BRACELET
by Helen Recorvits & illustrated by Gabi Swiatkowska

- BOOK REVIEW
YOON AND THE CHRISTMAS MITTEN
by Helen Recorvits & illustrated by Gabi Swiatkowska

- BOOK REVIEW
MY NAME IS YOON
by Helen Recorvits & illustrated by Gabi Swiatkowska

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FAIRY NUFF

A TALE OF BLUEBELL WOOD

by Herbie Brennan & illustrated by Ross Collins ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 1, 2002

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Feckless but clever when it counts, young Fairy Nuff does accidentally blow up his woodland house—but on the bright side, he then helps to thwart a nuffarious neighbor’s plot to take over the Empire, earns a knighthood, and makes twenty thousand billion pounds to boot in this veddy British farce. As Fairy’s sibs Biggie and Sweetie, as well as their parents, Oldie Nuff and Oldie Nuff, have previously decamped, no one is hurt when the exploding barrel of gunpowder sets off an array of old war souvenirs. But after an errant grenade scatters gruff Widow Jennett Buhiss’s stock certificates to the winds, she orders her hulking henchman Orc to “ ‘BRING ME THE HEAD OF FAIRY NUFF!’ ” Fortunately, Fairy Nuff keeps his head; unfortunately, he’s slated to become dinner for the carnivorous rain forest plants in Widow Buhiss’s glasshouse. And luckily, he’s thrown into the same shed where Buhiss has stashed the kidnapped Queen of England. Brennan’s storyline doesn’t so much develop as take a series of wild spins and then chop off abruptly, but his extravagant puns and over-the-top pacing, enhanced by the raffish caricatures Collins (Busy Night, not reviewed, etc.) strews across every spread, will give fans of Ian Whybrow’s Little Wolf tales and the like more practice in delighted eye-rolling. Fair enuff. (Fiction. 9-11)