In a loving, occasionally sentimental story, Dodie is having a hard year: her parents are separated, and heading for divorce; her older brother, once a comrade, now finds her useless; her hopes for the school talent show are squashed by a disastrous tryout; and there is no one her age in the neighborhood. She’s feeling sorry for herself until Jeffrey moves in, a wheelchair-bound boy with muscular dystrophy and plenty of attitude about those who look upon him with pity. Dodie is just plain curious, and her persistent overtures of friendship win out. They become good friends, and unite his talent—painting—with her singing for another talent show. Jeffrey’s condition is deteriorating rapidly, however, and Dodie is on stage alone on the night of the performance. Dodie’s self-pity, abundant in the beginning, will be difficult for readers to abide, until it becomes a part of her realistic response to Jeffrey’s illness; shocked that he will die so young, Dodie finds herself blaming him for being one more disappointment in her life. Her turnaround is warming; as the disease progresses, Dodie faces up to her selfishness, and her own good fortune in knowing Jeffrey at all. Foland skips the death scene, reigning in the sadness while celebrating the serenity the two friends have found. For sheer tear-jerking, this is not up to Lurlene McDaniel’s formulaic novels, but it has rewarding moments. (Fiction. 9-12)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1999
ISBN: 1-56247-849-4
Page Count: 194
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1999
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
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
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