This teen gossip columnist's fiction debut floats like a bubble in the breeze, despite plenty of traumatic events and sibling conflict. Off to Italy for ten days with little brother Matt and parents Marc and Miranda, Melanie fills up her diary with details of the long flight and subsequent jetlag. Encounters with new people (“Almost everyone here speaks Italian—even kids”) and food, visits to famous places (“The Leaning Tower of Pisa is soooo cooool”), family squabbles, and a chain of calamities, from running into one of her father's old flames on her parents’ anniversary and having to search—twice—for a missing Matt, to having a wallet stolen and needing a quick trip to the emergency room after a fall. All's well that ends well, heigh ho; Melanie returns to the States with new tastes for gelato and parmesan cheese, a greater willingness to appreciate people—even dorky classmate Norbert—and an unaffected poem that sums up her experiences. Sprinkled with exclamation points, pronounced Italian words (“piazza (Pee Ot Za)” etc) and small drawings, Melanie's journal will tease fans of the Eloise sequels and like travelogues into further armchair adventuring. (Fiction. 9-11)
Pub Date: May 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-375-80509-5
Page Count: 144
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2000
In a second set of entries—of a planned three, all first published in somewhat different form online in installments—slacker diarist Greg starts a new school year. After a miserable summer of avoiding swim-team practice by hiding out in the bathroom (and having to wrap himself in toilet paper to keep from freezing), he finally passes on the dreaded “cheese touch” (a form of cooties) to an unsuspecting new classmate, then stumbles through another semester of pranks and mishaps. On the domestic front, his ongoing wars with older brother Rodrick, would-be drummer in a would-be metal band called Löded Diper, share center stage with their mother’s generally futile parenting strategies. As before, the text, which is done in a legible hand-lettered–style font, is liberally interspersed with funny line drawings, many of which feature punch lines in speech balloons. Though even less likable that Junie B. Jones, Greg is (well, generally) at least not actively malicious, and so often is he the victim of circumstance or his own schemes gone awry that readers can’t help but feel empathy. This reasonably self-contained installment closes with a truce between the siblings. A temporary one, more than likely. (Illustrated fiction. 9-11)
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-8109-9473-7
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Abrams
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2007
BOOK TO SCREEN
The journey is even gently funny—Omakayas’s brother spends much of the year with a porcupine on his head. Charming and...
This third entry in the Birchbark House series takes Omakayas and her family west from their home on the Island of the Golden-Breasted Woodpecker, away from land the U.S. government has claimed.
Difficulties abound; the unknown landscape is fraught with danger, and they are nearing hostile Bwaanag territory. Omakayas’s family is not only close, but growing: The travelers adopt two young chimookoman (white) orphans along the way. When treachery leaves them starving and alone in a northern Minnesota winter, it will take all of their abilities and love to survive. The heartwarming account of Omakayas’s year of travel explores her changing family relationships and culminates in her first moon, the onset of puberty. It would be understandable if this darkest-yet entry in Erdrich’s response to the Little House books were touched by bitterness, yet this gladdening story details Omakayas’s coming-of-age with appealing optimism.
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-06-029787-9
Page Count: 208
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2008
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
