A nonconformist teenager changes her style to fit into the Barbie-wannabe clique at a new school. Though Eve does it to please her parents, readers will wonder why she bothers; her mother, a traveling saleswoman, is seldom home, and thanks to a slovenly older brother and a radically clueless, unemployed father, she lives in a filthy shambles of unfinished home improvement projects. Interrupting her narrative for long rants (“I think it’s totally unfair that girls have to worry so much about how they look”) that become the basis of a teen column in the local paper, Eve recounts her efforts to cultivate class queen Lisle while keeping her embarrassing home life secret; the plotline is never more than a pretext, however, for introducing adult and young adult women trying on—comfortably for the most part—conventional gender roles and expectations. Most of the characters remain opaque; Sonenklar sends conflicting signals about whether Eve’s mother is deliberately staying away or not, and gives readers no help understanding why her father would refuse to inquire about a promising job opportunity. In the end, Lisle invites herself over, and Eve’s subsequent banishment from the fashion plate circle gives her a chance to wear old clothes and gain instant acceptance from arty social outsiders in her class. Lacking in the humor and imagination of Bug Boy (1997) and Bug Girl (1998), this is likely to leave readers more puzzled by its ambiguities than intrigued by issues it raises. (Fiction. 11-14)
Pub Date: May 15, 1999
ISBN: 0-8234-1456-6
Page Count: 149
Publisher: Holiday House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1999
Themes of freedom and responsibility twine between the lines of this short but heavy novel from the author of Because of Winn-Dixie (2000). Three months after his mother's death, Rob and his father are living in a small-town Florida motel, each nursing sharp, private pain. On the same day Rob has two astonishing encounters: first, he stumbles upon a caged tiger in the woods behind the motel; then he meets Sistine, a new classmate responding to her parents' breakup with ready fists and a big chip on her shoulder. About to burst with his secret, Rob confides in Sistine, who instantly declares that the tiger must be freed. As Rob quickly develops a yen for Sistine's company that gives her plenty of emotional leverage, and the keys to the cage almost literally drop into his hands, credible plotting plainly takes a back seat to character delineation here. And both struggle for visibility beneath a wagonload of symbol and metaphor: the real tiger (and the inevitable recitation of Blake's poem); the cage; Rob's dream of Sistine riding away on the beast's back; a mysterious skin condition on Rob's legs that develops after his mother's death; a series of wooden figurines that he whittles; a larger-than-life African-American housekeeper at the motel who dispenses wisdom with nearly every utterance; and the climax itself, which is signaled from the start. It's all so freighted with layers of significance that, like Lois Lowry's Gathering Blue (2000), Anne Mazer's Oxboy (1995), or, further back, Julia Cunningham's Dorp Dead (1965), it becomes more an exercise in analysis than a living, breathing story. Still, the tiger, "burning bright" with magnificent, feral presence, does make an arresting central image. (Fiction. 10-12)
Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-7636-0911-0
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2001
BOOK TO SCREEN
The poster boy for relentless mischief-makers everywhere, first encountered in No, David! (1998), gives his weary mother a rest by going to school. Naturally, he’s tardy, and that’s but the first in a long string of offenses—“Sit down, David! Keep your hands to yourself! PAY ATTENTION!”—that culminates in an afterschool stint. Children will, of course, recognize every line of the text and every one of David’s moves, and although he doesn’t exhibit the larger- than-life quality that made him a tall-tale anti-hero in his first appearance, his round-headed, gap-toothed enthusiasm is still endearing. For all his disruptive behavior, he shows not a trace of malice, and it’ll be easy for readers to want to encourage his further exploits. (Picture book. 5-7)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-590-48087-1
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1999
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