Two children and a dog offer a tentative hope for a strife-ridden, modern South Africa in this debut from Ferreira, a Reuters correspondent who grew up there. Eleven-year-old Vusi is Zulu. His life revolves around Gillette, the three-legged pup he has reared and trained in secret, hoping that despite his handicap the dog will become a true Zulu hunting dog. Twelve-year-old Shirley is English. She loves the sprawling farm she has grown up on and despairs at her father’s determination to send her to a boarding school instead of the newly desegregated local school. They meet in the bush and become fast—and very secret—friends. The present-tense narrative moves back and forth between the two children’s perspectives, occasionally broadening to include Vusi’s father, a beleaguered taxi driver whose livelihood is threatened by gangs; Shirley’s father, a dyed-in-the-wool racist who is less than happy with the post-apartheid era; and Robert Rudolph, a miraculously enlightened white farmer. Vusi is a meticulously drawn character, whose single-minded adoration of his dog is universal, but whose beliefs and concerns are uniquely Zulu. The land-loving Shirley is almost as well drawn; her maturing perspective causes her to question the truths that have sustained her since birth. The white secondary characters are less well developed: Shirley’s father is almost wholly despicable, Rudolph almost saintly in his willingness to find a path to peace. The inevitable clash between European and Zulu occurs, and just as inevitably, enormously improbably, and highly satisfactorily, Gillette saves the day, making possible a rapprochement. If the plotting and character development are not always as smooth as they should be, the narrative nevertheless offers glorious description of, as well as a valuable insight into, a part of the world that probably has never hit the radar screen of most young readers. A historical note precedes the story, contextualizing the tensions presented within. (Fiction. 10-14)
Pub Date: Sept. 26, 2002
ISBN: 0-374-39223-4
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2002
An impressive sequel.
Boy and fox follow separate paths in postwar rebuilding.
A year after Peter finds refuge with former soldier Vola, he prepares to leave to return to his childhood home. He plans to join the Junior Water Warriors, young people repurposing the machines and structures of war to reclaim reservoirs and rivers poisoned in the conflict, and then to set out on his own to live apart from others. At 13, Peter is competent and self-contained. Vola marvels at the construction of the floor of the cabin he’s built on her land, but the losses he’s sustained have left a mark. He imposes a penance on himself, reimagining the story of rescuing the orphaned kit Pax as one in which he follows his father’s counsel to kill the animal before he could form a connection. He thinks of his heart as having a stone inside it. Pax, meanwhile, has fathered three kits who claim his attention and devotion. Alternating chapters from the fox’s point of view demonstrate Pax’s care for his family—his mate, Bristle; her brother; and the three kits. Pax becomes especially attached to his daughter, who accompanies him on a journey that intersects with Peter’s and allows Peter to not only redeem his past, but imagine a future. This is a deftly nuanced look at the fragility and strength of the human heart. All the human characters read as White. Illustrations not seen.
An impressive sequel. (Fiction. 10-14)Pub Date: Sept. 7, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-06-293034-7
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Balzer + Bray/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 28, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2021
The straight-arrow son of a maybe-federal agent (he’s not quite sure) turns eco-terrorist in this first offering for kids from one of detective fiction’s funniest novelists. Fans of Hiaasen’s (Basket Case, 2001, etc.) novels for adults may wonder how well his profane and frequently kinky writing will adapt to a child’s audience; the answer is, remarkably well. Roy Eberhardt has recently arrived in Florida; accustomed to being the new kid after several family moves, he is more of an observer than a participant. When he observes a bare-footed boy running through the subdivisions of Coconut Grove, however, he finds himself compelled to follow and, later, to ally himself with the strange boy called Mullet Fingers. Meanwhile, the dimwitted but appealingly dogged Officer Delinko finds himself compelled to crack the case of the mysterious vandals at the construction site of a new Mother Paula’s All-American Pancake House—it couldn’t have anything to do with those cute burrowing owls, could it? The plot doesn’t overwhelm with surprises; even the densest readers will soon suss out the connections between Mullet Fingers, the owls, and Mother Paula’s steadfast denial of the owls’ existence. The fun lies in Hiaasen’s trademark twisted characters, including Dana Matherson, the class bully who regularly beats up on Roy and whose unwitting help Roy wickedly enlists; Beatrice Leep, Mullet Fingers’s fiercely loyal sister and co-conspirator; Curly, Mother Paula’s hilariously inept foreman; and Roy’s equally straight-arrow parents, who encourage him to do the right thing without exactly telling him how. Roy is rather surprisingly engaging, given his utter and somewhat unnatural wholesomeness; it’s his kind of determined innocence that sees through the corruption and compromises of the adult world to understand what must be done to make things right. If the ending is somewhat predictable, it is also entirely satisfying—Hoot is, indeed, a hoot. (Fiction. 10-14)
Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2002
ISBN: 0-375-82181-3
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2002
SEEN & HEARD
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