Warm-hearted and wonderfully likable.
Idalee Lovett’s summer is full of friendship and a dream of country music fame.
O’Connor revisits the Blue Ridge Mountains town of Colby, North Carolina (the setting of 2016’s Wish), where 11-year-old first-person narrator Idalee aspires to become her mother’s songwriter. Lovey Lovett and the Junkyard Dogs sing covers of popular songs, but Idalee, who comes from generations of country musicians, believes her original compositions can help her mother rise to stardom. She longs to win an upcoming songwriting contest for young people, but she doesn’t believe that any of the many songs she’s already written and strummed on her old, broken guitar have what it takes. She needs the blue guitar she saw in an Asheville music store. Idalee enlists friends Odell, Charlie, and Howard to help her find a treasure rumored to be hidden by her grandfather somewhere in her big, dilapidated family home, which has been turned into a rooming house. The pleasures of summertime independence and relaxed parenting and the absence of electronic screens and distractions give this work a timeless feel. Idalee’s songs focus on the funny and familiar. The lyrics of her new composition, “Dream,” are sweetly evocative: “Some folks dream of castles and dresses made of silk. / I dream of a cabin in the pines, cornbread, and buttermilk.” O’Connor’s affection for small towns, slightly eccentric people, and low-key humor shines through, her surehanded narrative and appealing characters reliably engaging, as always. Most characters read white.
Warm-hearted and wonderfully likable. (Fiction. 9-12)Pub Date: Aug. 26, 2025
ISBN: 9780374392949
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2025
However the compelling fitness of theme and event and the apt but unexpected imagery (the opening sentences compare the...
At a time when death has become an acceptable, even voguish subject in children's fiction, Natalie Babbitt comes through with a stylistic gem about living forever.
Protected Winnie, the ten-year-old heroine, is not immortal, but when she comes upon young Jesse Tuck drinking from a secret spring in her parents' woods, she finds herself involved with a family who, having innocently drunk the same water some 87 years earlier, haven't aged a moment since. Though the mood is delicate, there is no lack of action, with the Tucks (previously suspected of witchcraft) now pursued for kidnapping Winnie; Mae Tuck, the middle aged mother, striking and killing a stranger who is onto their secret and would sell the water; and Winnie taking Mae's place in prison so that the Tucks can get away before she is hanged from the neck until....? Though Babbitt makes the family a sad one, most of their reasons for discontent are circumstantial and there isn't a great deal of wisdom to be gleaned from their fate or Winnie's decision not to share it.
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1975
ISBN: 0312369816
Page Count: 164
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: April 13, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1975
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
Charming, poignant, and thoughtfully woven.
An aspiring scientist and a budding artist become friends and help each other with dream projects.
Unfolding in mid-1980s Sacramento, California, this story stars 12-year-olds Rosalind and Benjamin as first-person narrators in alternating chapters. Ro’s father, a fellow space buff, was killed by a drunk driver; the rocket they were working on together lies unfinished in her closet. As for Benji, not only has his best friend, Amir, moved away, but the comic book holding the clue for locating his dad is also missing. Along with their profound personal losses, the protagonists share a fixation with the universe’s intriguing potential: Ro decides to complete the rocket and hopes to launch mementos of her father into outer space while Benji’s conviction that aliens and UFOs are real compels his imagination and creativity as an artist. An accident in science class triggers a chain of events forcing Benji and Ro, who is new to the school, to interact and unintentionally learn each other’s secrets. They resolve to find Benji’s dad—a famous comic-book artist—and partner to finish Ro’s rocket for the science fair. Together, they overcome technical, scheduling, and geographical challenges. Readers will be drawn in by amusing and fantastical elements in the comic book theme, high emotional stakes that arouse sympathy, and well-drawn character development as the protagonists navigate life lessons around grief, patience, self-advocacy, and standing up for others. Ro is biracial (Chinese/White); Benji is White.
Charming, poignant, and thoughtfully woven. (Fiction. 9-12)Pub Date: Jan. 12, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-06-300888-5
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Quill Tree Books/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Oct. 26, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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