A compassionate, thought-provoking take on family, friendship, grief, and renewal.
After her brother suffers a severe brain injury, Persephone concocts a scheme to help her struggling family, but her good intentions go awry.
Thirteen-year-old Persephone Pearl Clark has never encountered a plant she couldn’t bring to life. Sadly, she can’t do the same for Levi, her beloved big brother, who remains unresponsive after a diving accident. One year later, her parents are mired in medical bills, and Levi’s condition is deteriorating. When Persephone discovers that Levi had intended to submit their former mining town in Wisconsin to Small Town Revival, a reality show that awards $100,000 to the contestant who transforms their town most dramatically, she realizes that the prize could buy Levi expensive advanced treatments as well as pay existing bills. Forging Levi’s signature, she submits his application, setting off a chain of secrets and lies that threatens to ruin everything. Despite quiet magical touches—an uncannily communicative cat; an eccentric woman tending her temperamental, sentient house and garden—Hautala realistically explores tough issues. Persephone’s grief and trauma are unflinchingly portrayed, as are her strained relationships with her equally wounded but staunchly supportive family and friends. Persephone’s inadvertent exploitation of Levi, who cannot consent, which is born out of her desperation to help, is gently but firmly countered by her parents’ respect for his dignity. Occasionally lyrical prose enhances the alternately cozy and stifling small-town atmosphere. Most characters, including Persephone, default to White.
A compassionate, thought-provoking take on family, friendship, grief, and renewal. (author’s note) (Fabulism. 10-14)Pub Date: Aug. 23, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-593-46368-0
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 24, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Some readers may feel that the resolution comes a mite too easily, but most will enjoy the journey and be pleased when...
Two sisters make an unauthorized expedition to their former hometown and in the process bring together the two parts of their divided family.
Dooley packs plenty of emotion into this eventful road trip, which takes place over the course of less than 24 hours. Twelve-year-old Ophelia, nicknamed Fella, and her 16-year-old sister, Zoey Grace, aka Zany, are the daughters of a lesbian couple, Shannon and Lacy, who could not legally marry. The two white girls squabble and share memories as they travel from West Virginia to Asheville, North Carolina, where Zany is determined to scatter Mama Lacy’s ashes in accordance with her wishes. The year is 2004, before the Supreme Court decision on gay marriage, and the girls have been separated by hostile, antediluvian custodial laws. Fella’s present-tense narration paints pictures not just of the difficulties they face on the trip (a snowstorm, car trouble, and an unlikely thief among them), but also of their lives before Mama Lacy’s illness and of the ways that things have changed since then. Breathless and engaging, Fella’s distinctive voice is convincingly childlike. The conversations she has with her sister, as well as her insights about their relationship, likewise ring true. While the girls face serious issues, amusing details and the caring adults in their lives keep the tone relatively light.
Some readers may feel that the resolution comes a mite too easily, but most will enjoy the journey and be pleased when Fella’s family figures out how to come together in a new way . (Historical fiction. 10-14)Pub Date: April 4, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-399-16504-7
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: Jan. 31, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
A sly, side-splitting hoot from start to finish.
The dreary prospect of spending a lifetime making caskets instead of wonderful inventions prompts a young orphan to snatch up his little sister and flee. Where? To the circus, of course.
Fortunately or otherwise, John and 6-year-old Page join up with Boz—sometime human cannonball for the seedy Wandering Wayfarers and a “vertically challenged” trickster with a fantastic gift for sowing chaos. Alas, the budding engineer barely has time to settle in to begin work on an experimental circus wagon powered by chicken poop and dubbed (with questionable forethought) the Autopsy. The hot pursuit of malign and indomitable Great-Aunt Beauregard, the Coggins’ only living relative, forces all three to leave the troupe for further flights and misadventures. Teele spins her adventure around a sturdy protagonist whose love for his little sister is matched only by his fierce desire for something better in life for them both and tucks in an outstanding supporting cast featuring several notably strong-minded, independent women (Page, whose glare “would kill spiders dead,” not least among them). Better yet, in Boz she has created a scene-stealing force of nature, a free spirit who’s never happier than when he’s stirring up mischief. A climactic clutch culminating in a magnificently destructive display of fireworks leaves the Coggin sibs well-positioned for bright futures. (Illustrations not seen.)
A sly, side-splitting hoot from start to finish. (Adventure. 11-13)Pub Date: April 12, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-06-234510-3
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Walden Pond Press/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
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