Slow pacing drags down this tale of grief and environmental conservation.
Can a family torn apart after losing their mother to Covid-19 find a new life on a tiny Alaskan island?
When Nicky Hall arrives on the island of Shee with her father and twin sister, Josie, the pandemic is still raging. Outspoken Josie has recently become an environmental activist and is ready to fight an upcoming vote to clear-cut a major section of the island’s ancient forest. The girls’ Uncle Cliff, who is married to their father’s sister, runs the logging mill crew. He’s sure that without the local lumber mill, many islanders will lose their jobs and have to leave. Introverted Nicky would rather stay out of the debate, but her cousin Clete tells her that he can hear the trees talking, and they’re saying that she will save them. There’s a dash of fabulism added to the science of this environmentally driven story that covers mycorrhizal networks and the life cycle of salmon, among other subjects. Unfortunately, some plot points and elements of emotional character development are handled repetitively, and transitions within scenes can be choppy. The Hall family is White; Uncle Cliff is Tlingit and also speaks the language. Although the intention to include Indigenous perspectives throughout is clear, the novel unfortunately centers a chosen one/White savior figure who is aided by an Indigenous secondary character who shares wisdom but seems only to exist to support her.
Slow pacing drags down this tale of grief and environmental conservation. (Fiction. 10-13)Pub Date: Oct. 26, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-593-30353-5
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2021
Rich and strange (and kitted out with an eye-catching cover), but stronger in the set pieces than the internal logic.
Chainani works an elaborate sea change akin to Gregory Maguire’s Wicked (1995), though he leaves the waters muddied.
Every four years, two children, one regarded as particularly nice and the other particularly nasty, are snatched from the village of Gavaldon by the shadowy School Master to attend the divided titular school. Those who survive to graduate become major or minor characters in fairy tales. When it happens to sweet, Disney princess–like Sophie and her friend Agatha, plain of features, sour of disposition and low of self-esteem, they are both horrified to discover that they’ve been dropped not where they expect but at Evil and at Good respectively. Gradually—too gradually, as the author strings out hundreds of pages of Hogwarts-style pranks, classroom mishaps and competitions both academic and romantic—it becomes clear that the placement wasn’t a mistake at all. Growing into their true natures amid revelations and marked physical changes, the two spark escalating rivalry between the wings of the school. This leads up to a vicious climactic fight that sees Good and Evil repeatedly switching sides. At this point, readers are likely to feel suddenly left behind, as, thanks to summary deus ex machina resolutions, everything turns out swell(ish).
Rich and strange (and kitted out with an eye-catching cover), but stronger in the set pieces than the internal logic. (Fantasy. 11-13)Pub Date: May 14, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-06-210489-2
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Feb. 12, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2013
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BOOK TO SCREEN
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
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