An amusingly quirky hero’s journey—though few will be convinced that roaches belong inside the house.
A white cockroach aspires to gain acceptance by humans and become a pet, not a pest, in this debut children’s book.
In an abandoned house live many cockroaches. One, Tuodi, is different from his cohorts: He’s white, sapient, and wants to be accepted by humans. When he glimpses a human house across the intervening Jungle of Insects, Tuodi is sure that living there would be marvelous. Other roaches warn him that “humans hate us,” but Tuodi sings to himself: “I’m gonna be a pet, not a pest. I will lose the letter s.” Tuodi makes a very dangerous journey through the jungle, which is controlled by powerful ant factions. In the House of Humans, Tuodi is almost killed, but Jay Anderson, an 11-year-old boy, wants to keep him, never having seen a white roach before. When Tuodi shows off his intelligence, Jay’s parents alert the government, which subjects the roach to painful testing. He survives, becoming “more powerful and wiser than all other insects.” Devoted to the Andersons, Tuodi is helpful around the house (finding keys, removing splinters, carrying notes); he also brokers a peace agreement with other insects. As the story ends, Tuodi has become a great insect leader, but more importantly, he has become a pet. In his book (appropriate for all ages), McCants has a tough sell in trying to make a roach, even one as special as Tuodi, an appealing companion animal. As Tuodi’s kin Mooko sings, “We’re pests, we’re pests. We can make an awful mess.” And it seems paradoxical, even unhealthy, that Tuodi would dream of being “perfect in all human ways.” Why should he not want to be perfect in all roach ways? They’re an enormously successful species. That aside, the tale has eccentric charm, many moments of bravery and heroism, and humor, as when Mr. Anderson tries to alert an indifferent Department of Agriculture: “Sir, would you be interested if I said I was planning to raise thirty million of them for pets?”
An amusingly quirky hero’s journey—though few will be convinced that roaches belong inside the house.Pub Date: May 26, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-983002-20-5
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Time Tunnel Media
Review Posted Online: Sept. 15, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
This large, stately, and intensely powerful new novel by the author of Terms of Endearment and The Last Picture Show is constructed around a cattle drive—an epic journey from dry, hard-drinking south Texas, where a band of retired Texas Rangers has been living idly, to the last outpost and the last days of the old, unsettled West in rough Montana. The time is the 1880s. The characters are larger than life and shimmer: Captain Woodrow Call, who leads the drive, is the American type of an unrelentingly righteous man whose values are puritanical and pioneering and whose orders, which his men inevitably follow, lead, toward the end, to their deaths; talkative Gus McCrae, Call's best friend, learned, lenient, almost magically skilled in a crisis, who is one of those who dies; Newt, the unacknowledged 17-year-old son of Captain Call's one period of self-indulgence and the inheritor of what will become a new and kinder West; and whores, drivers, misplaced sheriffs and scattered settlers, all of whom are drawn sharply, engagingly, movingly. As the rag-tag band drives the cattle 3,000 miles northward, only Call fails to learn that his quest to conquer more new territories in the West is futile—it's a quest that perishes as men are killed by natural menaces that soon will be tamed and by half-starved renegades who soon will die at the hands of those less heroic than themselves. McMurtry shows that it is a quest misplaced in history, in a landscape that is bare of buffalo but still mythic; and it is only one of McMurtry's major accomplishments that he does it without forfeiting a grain of the characters' sympathetic power or of the book's considerable suspense. This is a masterly novel. It will appeal to all lovers of fiction of the first order.
Pub Date: June 1, 1985
ISBN: 068487122X
Page Count: 872
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Sept. 30, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 1985
IN THE NEWS
SEEN & HEARD
Anyone who believes in true love or is simply willing to accept it as the premise of a winding tale will find this debut an...
True love flares between two people, but they find that circumstances always impede it.
On a winter day in London, Laurie spots Jack from her bus home and he sparks a feeling in her so deep that she spends the next year searching for him. Her roommate and best friend, Sarah, is the perfect wing-woman but ultimately—and unknowingly—ends the search by finding Jack and falling for him herself. Laurie’s hasty decision not to tell Sarah is the second painful missed opportunity (after not getting off the bus), but Sarah’s happiness is so important to Laurie that she dedicates ample energy into retraining her heart not to love Jack. Laurie is misguided, but her effort and loyalty spring from a true heart, and she considers her project mostly successful. Perhaps she would have total success, but the fact of the matter is that Jack feels the same deep connection to Laurie. His reasons for not acting on them are less admirable: He likes Sarah and she’s the total package; why would he give that up just because every time he and Laurie have enough time together (and just enough alcohol) they nearly fall into each other’s arms? Laurie finally begins to move on, creating a mostly satisfying life for herself, whereas Jack’s inability to be genuine tortures him and turns him into an ever bigger jerk. Patriarchy—it hurts men, too! There’s no question where the book is going, but the pacing is just right, the tone warm, and the characters sympathetic, even when making dumb decisions.
Anyone who believes in true love or is simply willing to accept it as the premise of a winding tale will find this debut an emotional, satisfying read.Pub Date: Oct. 16, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-525-57468-2
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: July 30, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2018
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