A sweet, innocent book about how love and imagination can open hearts and cure ills.
A lighthearted and nostalgic middle-school tale about the redemptive powers of imagination.
With a successful surgeon for a father and the sole heir of an old-money family for a mother, Abigail seems to have it all. But when her mother’s postpartum depression refuses to lift and World War II keeps her father away for years, it’s clear that her life is not idyllic after all. Not long before Abigail’s eighth birthday, her mother, Caroline, sinks so deeply into a depression that she requires hospitalization. As a diversion for the worried girl, Abigail’s nanny takes her for an extended visit to the Connecticut home of her maternal grandmother, a crusty, widowed blueblood who, contrary to her habitual aloofness, quickly warms to the girl. In her grandmother’s attic, Abigail discovers a beautiful dollhouse that belonged to her mother and her grandmother. To her amazement, Abigail realizes that the dollhouse family is alive and that she can shrink down to dollhouse size herself. From the dolls’ stories about her mother’s childhood, Abigail gathers that something mysterious lurks in her family’s history, something that might aid her mother’s recovery. At her diminutive friends’ urging, she sleuths around, finally uncovering a decades-old family secret that also brings her family closer. While at times a bit clumsy in its characters’ contrived emotional reactions and its forced nostalgia for 1940s New York, Bliss’s debut novel is nonetheless a heartfelt, sincere look at the importance of family, honesty and imagination. On a larger scale, this is a book about postwar urbanization and how social democratization finally overtook the American gentry. Caught between two different worlds, Caroline suffers, but the priorities of the new world–valuing family over social status, the individual over class–prove strong enough to rescue her and to redeem the old world, represented in this case by her grandmother. Make no mistake, Abigail’s privileged and dated world is not one most kids will easily relate to, and Caroline’s remarkable recovery bears little resemblance to the average trajectory of depression. Taken as a fairy tale, however, this is a recommended read.
A sweet, innocent book about how love and imagination can open hearts and cure ills.Pub Date: Jan. 11, 2008
ISBN: 978-1-4196-7615-4
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Paulsen recalls personal experiences that he incorporated into Hatchet (1987) and its three sequels, from savage attacks by moose and mosquitoes to watching helplessly as a heart-attack victim dies. As usual, his real adventures are every bit as vivid and hair-raising as those in his fiction, and he relates them with relish—discoursing on “The Fine Art of Wilderness Nutrition,” for instance: “Something that you would never consider eating, something completely repulsive and ugly and disgusting, something so gross it would make you vomit just looking at it, becomes absolutely delicious if you’re starving.” Specific examples follow, to prove that he knows whereof he writes. The author adds incidents from his Iditarod races, describes how he made, then learned to hunt with, bow and arrow, then closes with methods of cooking outdoors sans pots or pans. It’s a patchwork, but an entertaining one, and as likely to win him new fans as to answer questions from his old ones. (Autobiography. 10-13)
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-385-32650-5
Page Count: 150
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2000
A familiar but heartfelt romance for easygoing readers.
In O’Gorman’s YA debut, two best friends try to fool people into thinking that they’re in love—and then discover a new facet of their relationship.
Sally Spitz is a frizzy-haired 17-year-old girl with a charming zeal for three things: Harry Potter (she’s a Gryffindor), Star Wars, and getting into Duke University. During her senior year of high school, she goes on a slew of miserable dates, set up by her mother and her own second-best–friend–turned-matchmaker, Lillian Hooker. Sally refuses to admit to anyone that she’s actually head over Converses in love with her longtime best friend, a boy named Baldwin Eugene Charles Kent, aka “Becks.” After a particularly awkward date, Sally devises a plan to end Lillian’s matchmaking attempts; specifically, she plans to hire someone to act as her fake boyfriend, or “F.B.F.” But before Sally can put her plan into action, a rumor circulates that Sally and Becks are already dating. Becks agrees to act as Sally’s F.B.F. in exchange for a box of Goobers and Sally’s doing his calculus homework for a month. Later, as they hold hands in the hall and “practice” make-out sessions in Becks’ bedroom, their friendship heads into unfamiliar territory. Over the course of this novel, O’Gorman presents an inviting and enjoyable account of lifelong friendship transforming into young love. Though the author’s reliance on familiar tropes may be comforting to a casual reader, it may frustrate those who may be looking for a more substantial and less predictable plot. A number of ancillary characters lack very much complexity, and the story, overall, would have benefited from an added twist or two. Even so, however, this remains a largely engaging and often endearing debut.
A familiar but heartfelt romance for easygoing readers.Pub Date: Dec. 3, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-64063-759-7
Page Count: 340
Publisher: Entangled Teen
Review Posted Online: Jan. 7, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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