by David Almond ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 9, 2002
In 18 short stories, none previously published here, the author of Heaven Eyes (2001) surveys a child’s world in which love and pain intertwine. The tales are partly autobiographical—or, as he puts it: “They merge memory and dream, the real and the imagined, truth and lies.” After discovering “The Middle of the World” within the circle of his loving family, the young narrator steps out to encounter both abused children (“Loosa Fine”), and damaged elders like Miss Golightly, whose whole history is encompassed by a fetus in a jar and old photos of a uniformed beau. He enjoys concurrent flings with a beautiful visitor and faddish mysticism; travels in a carnival “Time Machine,” discovers supposedly imaginary “Jonadab” on a map, and reports visions of his buried sister among flocks of angels. Almond writes with haunting spareness of these experiences, and also of his father’s death, and his mother’s increasing infirmity—leaving readers to figure out for themselves why people laugh or weep at certain moments, to think about the complex connections between the living and the dead, and to wrestle with troubling questions of morality or religious faith. Some of his experiences are shocking, some uplifting, obliquely amusing, even magical; this is not light or easy reading, but few who tackle it will come away unmoved. (Short stories. YA)
Pub Date: April 9, 2002
ISBN: 0-385-72946-4
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2002
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by Kate DiCamillo ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2001
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
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BOOK TO SCREEN
by David Shannon ‧ RELEASE DATE: 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
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