The breezy discussion of an unusual, appealing hobby keeps this problem novel from becoming overbearingly message-driven.
This short chapter book tackles common, but intimidating, childhood problems, such as bullies, divorce, step-parents and alcoholic parents.
Twelve-year old Ian shares the hobby of pigeon racing with his newly remarried dad, but he’s also entranced by Ollie, the falcon owned by the family of his new step-cousin, Chad. When Ollie kills Ian’s champion pigeon, Ian and his dad acquire a new racing pigeon with a prestigious pedigree. But the bird has a bad habit that prevents it from racing (flying on to the roof of the house, instead of into the coop), so the boys decide to use Ollie to frighten the pigeon into behaving properly before the big race. Ian relies on his Dad’s judgment, while learning that his new stepmother is actually pretty cool, and that his bully cousin Chad, who has to deal with his drunken father, has his own vulnerabilities. While the author doesn’t gloss over the danger, aside from the original pigeon’s death, all ends well. Although Natural Instinct resembles a beginning chapter book in length, Bechler sets her prose at a fairly advanced level, which will make it appealing to older readers. Hart’s fuzzy charcoal drawings provide a subtle enhancement to the story.
The breezy discussion of an unusual, appealing hobby keeps this problem novel from becoming overbearingly message-driven. (Fiction. 10-12)Pub Date: July 13, 2005
ISBN: 0-595-34355-4
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An inventive, exciting, funny ride with surprising emotional resonance–a bloody good time.
High school drama, heartbreak and zombies.
Schloegel’s meta-novel features lovelorn teens battling a zombie invasion, but the real emotional stakes are found in the interstitial blog entries of “plain/unusual” protagonist Eleanor Armstrong–a fiercely intelligent, alienated high school student working out her issues through writing about the undead and other horrors of secondary education. The superpowers referenced in the title refer to the beauty and popularity of Eleanor’s protagonist and stand-in, Sarah, a plucky “pop girl” with a smart mouth pitched somewhere between Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Juno. Sarah negotiates her friendship with social pariah Marky and crush on popular boy Brandon while repelling zombies with admirable aplomb, but Eleanor has serious trouble with her relationships, including a strained detente with her emotionally reserved FBI agent father, a new wrinkle in her cozy bond with a nerdy friend and a disturbing discovery about her younger brother that leads Eleanor, most improbably, to an interest in weight lifting and the discovery of her unexpected superpowers. The zombie sections of the narrative are funny and scary in the best zombie-apocalypse tradition, and the revelations about Eleanor’s life in her blog posts deftly contextualize the action of her novel and deepen the emotional impact of both stories. The back-and-forth banter between Eleanor and Marky reads as authentic and smart teenspeak, and Schloegel convincingly conveys the desperation, loneliness and, above all, boredom of adolescence–a boredom that drives students to prey upon each other like the reanimated corpses that menace Sarah and Brandon. Eleanor has an instantly believable and engaging voice, a bracing moral intelligence, generosity of spirit and her novel is a hoot.
An inventive, exciting, funny ride with surprising emotional resonance–a bloody good time.Pub Date: Sept. 13, 2009
ISBN: 978-1439249758
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An impassioned plea to children that should be more engaging.
Torrey, a young girl with legendary connections to the natural world, enlists the help of friends of various ethnic backgrounds to fight the monster that threatens to consume nature entirely.
The protagonist and her dog, Charlie-Gobbles, are surprised to find a sweet baby dragon in the park one evening. As it follows them home, Torrey realizes that the adults they pass do not see the creature, nor the red ribbon it tends to morph into when traveling in public. Children, on the other hand, are privy to the sight of the dragon that “seemed lost, almost as if someone had shocked him with a stun gun.” Once Torrey and her friends figure out what to feed it–the dragon reveals an indefatigable passion for vegetation–the creature starts to grow exponentially. Soon they discover the dragon is not quite as benign as they first thought. Overnight, it eats the park and makes a start on the surrounding nature preserve. Luckily, with the help of a wise Chinese hermit, the children form a plan to stop the beast. The book is a blatant call to arms, and Toman reveals more than a passing familiarity with biology and marine biology. Her descriptions of the fish tank and the paintings in Mr. Meng zi’s house include detailed lists of fish and animals, species thriving and extinct. She is obviously passionate about curbing global warming, but this passion is revealed through a plot that relies too heavily on manufactured coincidence, like Little Jiro’s collection of hat pins that they use to defeat the dragon, and stereotypical characters, like Mr. Meng zi, the Chinese hermit who reveals to Torrey her destiny as savior of the natural world. The author is capable of lovely phrases like, “The next morning, the sun fractured into the bedroom,” but the strength of these original descriptions is diluted by grammatical inconsistencies such as fluctuating verb tenses and adjective/adverb confusion. The few crayon drawings do not add enough visual flair to the book. Though it encourages children to take better care of the earth, this narrative doesn’t sufficiently impart the importance of stewardship.
An impassioned plea to children that should be more engaging.Pub Date: May 22, 2009
ISBN: 978-1-4392-3020-6
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
