At first glance, two people could hardly be less alike than that irrepressible inventor, Junior Blossom, and Mad Mary Cantrell, rural equivalent of a bag lady. Junior is a little boy from a close-knit, if impoverished, family, newly in touch with the world since last year's triumph in The Not-lust-Anybody Family, proud of his recently built coyote trap. Mad Mary went to school with his grandfather, back when she was the daughter of the town's wealthiest citizen; but, having lost home and family, she has escaped the trap of civilization and retreated to a mountain cave, subsisting, like a vulture, on small dead animals left by cars along the road. When Junior gets caught in his own trap, it is she who finds and rescues him; and while the community organizes to "rescue" him from her, the two become friends over shared fundamentals: a pot of stew, interest in the same books, and the discovery that each yearns to speak, if only for a few minutes, with a dead father. Trust Byars to come up with a story not like anyone else's and to tell it with lightness and humor, clarity and simplicity, extracting every bit of drama from small events. Young readers entranced by the lively plot won't notice her careful, economical structure, but they'll be touched by the humanity of her marvelously quirky characters (including the persistent dog, Mud, who gets his own subplot). Rogers' soft, full-page illustrations are just right, portraits of characters at significant moments. Not to be missed.
Pub Date: Oct. 3, 1986
ISBN: 0823421449
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: April 18, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1986
Renata’s wren encounter proves magical, one most children could only wish to experience outside of this lovely story.
A home-renovation project is interrupted by a family of wrens, allowing a young girl an up-close glimpse of nature.
Renata and her father enjoy working on upgrading their bathroom, installing a clawfoot bathtub, and cutting a space for a new window. One warm night, after Papi leaves the window space open, two wrens begin making a nest in the bathroom. Rather than seeing it as an unfortunate delay of their project, Renata and Papi decide to let the avian carpenters continue their work. Renata witnesses the birth of four chicks as their rosy eggs split open “like coats that are suddenly too small.” Renata finds at a crucial moment that she can help the chicks learn to fly, even with the bittersweet knowledge that it will only hasten their exits from her life. Rosen uses lively language and well-chosen details to move the story of the baby birds forward. The text suggests the strong bond built by this Afro-Latinx father and daughter with their ongoing project without needing to point it out explicitly, a light touch in a picture book full of delicate, well-drawn moments and precise wording. Garoche’s drawings are impressively detailed, from the nest’s many small bits to the developing first feathers on the chicks and the wall smudges and exposed wiring of the renovation. (This book was reviewed digitally with 10-by-20-inch double-page spreads viewed at actual size.)
Renata’s wren encounter proves magical, one most children could only wish to experience outside of this lovely story. (Picture book. 3-7)Pub Date: March 16, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-593-12320-1
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Schwartz & Wade/Random
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2021
Good Guys and Bad get just deserts in the end, and Stanley gets plenty of opportunities to display pluck and valor in this...
Sentenced to a brutal juvenile detention camp for a crime he didn't commit, a wimpy teenager turns four generations of bad family luck around in this sunburnt tale of courage, obsession, and buried treasure from Sachar (Wayside School Gets a Little Stranger, 1995, etc.).
Driven mad by the murder of her black beau, a schoolteacher turns on the once-friendly, verdant town of Green Lake, Texas, becomes feared bandit Kissin' Kate Barlow, and dies, laughing, without revealing where she buried her stash. A century of rainless years later, lake and town are memories—but, with the involuntary help of gangs of juvenile offenders, the last descendant of the last residents is still digging. Enter Stanley Yelnats IV, great-grandson of one of Kissin' Kate's victims and the latest to fall to the family curse of being in the wrong place at the wrong time; under the direction of The Warden, a woman with rattlesnake venom polish on her long nails, Stanley and each of his fellow inmates dig a hole a day in the rock-hard lake bed. Weeks of punishing labor later, Stanley digs up a clue, but is canny enough to conceal the information of which hole it came from. Through flashbacks, Sachar weaves a complex net of hidden relationships and well-timed revelations as he puts his slightly larger-than-life characters under a sun so punishing that readers will be reaching for water bottles.
Good Guys and Bad get just deserts in the end, and Stanley gets plenty of opportunities to display pluck and valor in this rugged, engrossing adventure. (Fiction. 9-13)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998
ISBN: 978-0-374-33265-5
Page Count: 233
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2000
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