Fans of magical realism à la Alice Hoffman will feel at home with this story.
Debut novelist Davis spins a time-travel story that features an unstoppable young heroine.
Charlotte, a Toronto fifth-grader, is a girl who dominates everyone around her by force of her determined imagination. She’s being raised by her grandfather Leo after suffering a childhood injury and the deaths of her parents, and he keeps a light hand on the reins of the stubborn but fragile girl. Her best friend is Henry, and one day, the two are hiding in the forbidden tower room of Leo’s house when his friend Gwendolyn comes to call. They hear her describe a missing brooch, carved with an image of a tree from Welsh legend, and then they’re suddenly whisked from their hiding place to 1939 Toronto. The elderly Gwendolyn is now Charlotte’s age—a snooty girl who’s splendidly equal to Charlotte in bossiness and quite uninterested in her unexpected guests. The children soon discover the adult Leo working in the family’s kitchen. It turns out that he’s time traveled before, and he tells Charlotte that she must accomplish a mission here in the past. She isn’t thrilled that her quest involves the unlikable Gwendolyn, but she takes to the adventure with aplomb. Henry also flourishes, finding boyhood in the 1930s much more congenial than its 1990s version. Charlotte and Henry aren’t always convincingly childlike, particularly in the book’s quirkier moments, but they effectively carry the story. Charlotte’s boldness and Henry’s irritated devotion will make young readers grin. The period history is detailed and intriguing, as well, and includes ugly glimpses of anti-Semitism half a world away from the coming war in Europe. The story of the brooch ties lightly into past world events as well as those of Charlotte and Henry’s own decade. A few plot threads remain unresolved, particularly regarding Charlotte’s rather vague back story and a subplot about a royal visit. Overall, however, Davis is a very engaging storyteller, and Charlotte is a wonderful creation.
Fans of magical realism à la Alice Hoffman will feel at home with this story.Pub Date: June 4, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4602-6633-5
Page Count: 304
Publisher: FriesenPress
Review Posted Online: July 22, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
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