Though the symbolism and level of self-awareness in this brief metaphorical journey will speak more to an adult audience, any reader who has felt fear of the unknown will identify with its solitary narrator. Aptly portrayed as a mouse—and usually seen from a distance, to seem even smaller—the speaker is finally driven by the pressure of long-standing fear to leave familiar home and streets for a dark, mysterious patch of woods. From outside, the forest is dark indeed, but not far past its border is a lovely glade, stippled in Nivola’s (The Friday Nights of Nana, 2001, etc.) high-angled paintings with light and wildflowers. Frightened by a shadow, the mouse trips and falls, drifts off to sleep, and by the time it wakes to see a butterfly “like a guardian angel,” and a sky “bigger than the forest, bigger even than my fear had been,” that fear has dissipated. The mouse’s courage, as well as the handsome art, have their appeal, but timorous children will find anxiety more believably overcome in such tales as Ellen Stoll Walsh’s Pip’s Magic (1994) or James Stevenson’s What’s Under My Bed? (1983). (Picture book. 10+)
Pub Date: May 3, 2002
ISBN: 0-374-32452-2
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Frances Foster/Farrar, Straus & Giroux
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2002
Categories: CHILDREN'S ANIMALS | CHILDREN'S SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
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Is dolphin-assisted therapy so beneficial to patients that it’s worth keeping a wild dolphin captive?
Twelve-year-old Lily has lived with her emotionally distant oncologist stepfather and a succession of nannies since her mother died in a car accident two years ago. Nannies leave because of the difficulty of caring for Adam, Lily’s severely autistic 4-year-old half brother. The newest, Suzanne, seems promising, but Lily is tired of feeling like a planet orbiting the sun Adam. When she meets blind Zoe, who will attend the same private middle school as Lily in the fall, Lily’s happy to have a friend. However, Zoe’s take on the plight of the captive dolphin, Nori, used in Adam’s therapy opens Lily’s eyes. She knows she must use her influence over her stepfather, who is consulting on Nori’s treatment for cancer (caused by an oil spill), to free the animal. Lily’s got several fine lines to walk, as she works to hold onto her new friend, convince her stepfather of the rightness of releasing Nori, and do what’s best for Adam. In her newest exploration of animal-human relationships, Rorby’s lonely, mature heroine faces tough but realistic situations. Siblings of children on the spectrum will identify with Lily. If the tale flirts with sentimentality and some of the characters are strident in their views, the whole never feels maudlin or didactic.
Dolphin lovers will appreciate this look at our complicated relationship with these marine mammals. (Fiction. 10-13)Pub Date: May 26, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-545-67605-2
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2015
Categories: CHILDREN'S ANIMALS | CHILDREN'S FAMILY
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Six middle schoolers + mad scientists + Everglades = adventure.
Cat, along with five other children who have suffered head injuries, goes to what is billed as the pre-eminent neurological center in the world, the International Center for Advanced Neurology, located in the Everglades. At first, she receives excellent care, but she soon overhears an ominous conversation that leads to her discovery of the awful truth: The terrible Dr. Ames and his colleague intend to implant the children with the DNA of long-dead scientists, including Albert Einstein, Robert Oppenheimer, Marie Curie and even Leonardo da Vinci. Worse, they learn that Trent, who has already received a transplant, has virtually become Thomas Edison. Trent not only has Edison’s DNA, he has Edison’s century-old memories and speech patterns. Cat and her friends seize an opportunity to escape, relying on Trent’s technical expertise and “inherited” memory to evade the bad guys. As she outlines in her author’s note, Messner follows good science in her descriptions of head-injury treatment; she also gives teachers opportunities to explore the differences between hereditary and acquired characteristics in her more fictional genetic “science.” Her characterizations are solid and age-appropriate; Trent, as young Thomas Edison still avidly working on alternating currents, supplies some laughs.
With plenty of thrills, friendship, some humor, intrigue and an easy good-guys/bad-guys escape plot, young readers will find lots of fun here. (Science fiction. 10-14)Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-8027-2314-7
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Walker
Review Posted Online: June 15, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2013
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