Tess, 12, finds emotional comfort in a stray cat she befriends after running away from her efficient, sensible father and stepmother to live with her slapdash, irresponsible mother. When Tess first meets her “enemies,” her soon-to-be stepmother and stepsiblings, she tells herself that these “are the aliens who have captured my father, and I shall not like them.” And Tess, a poor student who is messy and feels trapped by her tidy stepmother’s multitude of rules, dislikes living with them. But the final straw comes when Annie, Tess’s three-year-old stepsister, destroys an extra-credit social-studies assignment Tess has been diligently working on. Fed up and furious, Tess runs away, hoofing it to her mother’s home, which requires camping overnight at a state park. At the campgrounds, a stray cat unexpectedly adopts her, and follows her all the way to her mother’s small, cramped condo. Tess, who has been feeling lonely and unloved, develops a powerful connection to her feline friend, but her mother hates cats and her dad is allergic. How Tess solves these various difficulties is the meat of the story, but it’s a surprisingly bland dish. Tess’s mother is so indifferent to Tess’s needs that she borders on negligent, the result being that Tess’s rather flavorless self-sacrificing father and well-organized stepmother look good in contrast. This, in turn, causes the narrative to feel lopsided, making Tess’s final decision seem almost preordained. Nonetheless, readers, especially children of divorce, should relate to Tess and find her a sympathetic protagonist. (Fiction. 10-14)
Pub Date: April 22, 2002
ISBN: 0-618-09644-2
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Clarion Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2002
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A sly, side-splitting hoot from start to finish.
The dreary prospect of spending a lifetime making caskets instead of wonderful inventions prompts a young orphan to snatch up his little sister and flee. Where? To the circus, of course.
Fortunately or otherwise, John and 6-year-old Page join up with Boz—sometime human cannonball for the seedy Wandering Wayfarers and a “vertically challenged” trickster with a fantastic gift for sowing chaos. Alas, the budding engineer barely has time to settle in to begin work on an experimental circus wagon powered by chicken poop and dubbed (with questionable forethought) the Autopsy. The hot pursuit of malign and indomitable Great-Aunt Beauregard, the Coggins’ only living relative, forces all three to leave the troupe for further flights and misadventures. Teele spins her adventure around a sturdy protagonist whose love for his little sister is matched only by his fierce desire for something better in life for them both and tucks in an outstanding supporting cast featuring several notably strong-minded, independent women (Page, whose glare “would kill spiders dead,” not least among them). Better yet, in Boz she has created a scene-stealing force of nature, a free spirit who’s never happier than when he’s stirring up mischief. A climactic clutch culminating in a magnificently destructive display of fireworks leaves the Coggin sibs well-positioned for bright futures. (Illustrations not seen.)
A sly, side-splitting hoot from start to finish. (Adventure. 11-13)Pub Date: April 12, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-06-234510-3
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Walden Pond Press/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
Longing—for connection, for family, for a voice—roars to life with just a touch of magic.
A young girl bargaining for the health of her grandmother discovers both her family’s past and the strength of her own voice.
For many years, Lily’s Korean grandmother, Halmoni, has shared her Asian wisdom and healing powers with her predominantly White community. When Lily, her sister, Sam—both biracial, Korean and White—and their widowed mom move in with Halmoni to be close with her as she ages, Lily begins to see a magical tiger. What were previously bedtime stories become dangerously prophetic, as Lily begins to piece together fact from fiction. There is no need for prior knowledge of Korean folktales, although a traditional Korean myth propels the story forward. From the tiger, Lily learns that Halmoni has bottled up the hard stories of her past to keep sadness at bay. Lily makes a deal with the tiger to heal her grandmother by releasing those stories. What she comes to realize is that healing doesn’t mean health and that Halmoni is not the only one in need of the power of storytelling. Interesting supporting characters are fully developed but used sparingly to keep the focus on the simple yet suspenseful plot. Keller infuses this tale, which explores both the end of life and coming-of-age, with a sensitive examination of immigration issues and the complexity of home. It is at one and the same time completely American and thoroughly informed by Korean culture.
Longing—for connection, for family, for a voice—roars to life with just a touch of magic. (Fiction. 10-14)Pub Date: Jan. 28, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5247-1570-0
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 28, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2019
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