A flawed but hopeful tale about what children can achieve.
This middle-grade book follows the adventures of a girl from the far north whose ice raft drifts to New York City, where she learns about the plight of circus animals.
Haibu, 10, lives very far north in a tiny village. Her (fictional) Mayok people follow a lifestyle similar to the Inuit, which includes hunting with sled dogs, ice fishing, and avoiding polar bears, or “nanuq” (the Inuit word for polar bear). Haibu is impatient about restrictions on what girls can do in her society; she’d love to go fishing with her father and brother, for example, and isn’t scared of danger. The mantra that goes with her special bracelet has been passed down for generations: “I can do anything I believe I can do. I can be anything I believe I can be. I can achieve anything I want to achieve.” She decides to prove the mantra right and go ice fishing by herself. She catches some fish, meets a seal pup, and even learns that she can communicate with animals, but she runs into trouble when she confronts an angry polar bear. Then the ice floe beneath her breaks away and she’s sent drifting all the way to New York, where she finds refuge at an orphanage. In search of bears, Haibu finds a nearby circus, where the animals’ mistreatment galvanizes her; soon, she and the orphans mount a rescue mission. In this debut, Freeman and Price aim to educate children about “the global treatment of wild animals” and what they can do to help. The prose style is engaging and often funny, and the story may inspire kids to get involved. However, the characters’ remedy—breaking into circus cages—isn’t very practical, and scenes of animal cruelty may upset sensitive readers. The Mayok are also a problematic creation, appropriating details of traditional Inuit culture while adding elements like the Shookia bracelet, with its distinctly Western-sounding affirmations. Boros and Szikszai’s (Demon’s Dream, 1996) color illustrations are nicely detailed but cutesy, featuring middle-school-aged children with toddlerlike proportions; it’s also strange that Haibu, who’s indigenous to the Arctic, has blue eyes.
A flawed but hopeful tale about what children can achieve.Pub Date: Nov. 6, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5132-6221-5
Page Count: 144
Publisher: Graphic Arts Books
Review Posted Online: Dec. 18, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A well-loved author brings together, on a Maine vacation, characters from two of her books. Peter's parents have assured him that though Sheila ("The Great") Tubman and her family will be nearby, they'll have their own house; but instead, they find a shared arrangement in which the two families become thoroughly intertwined—which suits everyone but the curmudgeonly Peter. Irrepressible little brother Fudge, now five, is planning to marry Sheila, who agrees to babysit with Peter's toddler sister; there's a romance between the grandparents in the two families; and the wholesome good fun, including a neighborhood baseball game featuring an aging celebrity player, seems more important than Sheila and Peter's halfhearted vendetta. The story's a bit tame (no controversies here), but often amusingly true to life and with enough comic episodes to satisfy fans.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1990
ISBN: 0-525-44672-9
Page Count: -
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2000
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Bishop’s spectacular photographs of the tiny red-eyed tree frog defeat an incidental text from Cowley (Singing Down the Rain, 1997, etc.). The frog, only two inches long, is enormous in this title; it appears along with other nocturnal residents of the rain forests of Central America, including the iguana, ant, katydid, caterpillar, and moth. In a final section, Cowley explains how small the frog is and aspects of its life cycle. The main text, however, is an afterthought to dramatic events in the photos, e.g., “But the red-eyed tree frog has been asleep all day. It wakes up hungry. What will it eat? Here is an iguana. Frogs do not eat iguanas.” Accompanying an astonishing photograph of the tree frog leaping away from a boa snake are three lines (“The snake flicks its tongue. It tastes frog in the air. Look out, frog!”) that neither advance nor complement the action. The layout employs pale and deep green pages and typeface, and large jewel-like photographs in which green and red dominate. The combination of such visually sophisticated pages and simplistic captions make this a top-heavy, unsatisfying title. (Picture book. 7-9)
Pub Date: March 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-590-87175-7
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1999
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