Monalisa Kent is probably the least popular person in small Muessa Junction. When she was just six years old, she accidentally set fire to the futon factory where her father, like most of the town, worked. Each anniversary of the fire, the vultures from the press come to interview Mr. Kent, the hero who saved Mona and her playmate from the fire. As town pariah, she begins collecting bumper stickers, and using them for “poetry raids.” She embraces her outsider status by dying her hair blue and being sullen. She hates the notoriety, with her emotions for those surrounding her a roiling mass of confusion. Eventually, Monalisa finds that events are not what they always seem to be, nor are memories all that reliable, and things end with an uneasy peace between the characters. The middle of the narrative drags a bit, and efforts to make most of the characters eccentric slow things down, but multiple surprises (not all believable) at the end may grab the reader’s attention. (Fiction. 12-14)
Pub Date: July 10, 2007
ISBN: 978-0-385-73393-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2007
BOOK REVIEW
Paulsen recalls personal experiences that he incorporated into Hatchet (1987) and its three sequels, from savage attacks by moose and mosquitoes to watching helplessly as a heart-attack victim dies. As usual, his real adventures are every bit as vivid and hair-raising as those in his fiction, and he relates them with relish—discoursing on “The Fine Art of Wilderness Nutrition,” for instance: “Something that you would never consider eating, something completely repulsive and ugly and disgusting, something so gross it would make you vomit just looking at it, becomes absolutely delicious if you’re starving.” Specific examples follow, to prove that he knows whereof he writes. The author adds incidents from his Iditarod races, describes how he made, then learned to hunt with, bow and arrow, then closes with methods of cooking outdoors sans pots or pans. It’s a patchwork, but an entertaining one, and as likely to win him new fans as to answer questions from his old ones. (Autobiography. 10-13)
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-385-32650-5
Page Count: 150
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2000
At once serious and playful, this tale of a teenager’s penitential journey to four corners of the country can be read on several levels. While attempting to kill himself on the highway after a humiliating social failure, Brent causes a fatal accident for another motorist, Lea Zamora. His sentence requires a personal act of atonement, if the victim’s family so desires; Lea’s mother hands him a bus pass and tells him to place pictorial whirligigs in Maine, Florida, Washington, and California as monuments to her daughter’s ability to make people smile. Brent sets out willingly, armed with plywood, new tools, and an old construction manual. Characteristically of Fleischman (Seedfolks, 1997, etc.), the narrative structure is unconventional: Among the chapters in which Brent constructs and places the contraptions are independent short stories that feature the whirligigs, playing significant roles in the lives of others. Brent encounters a variety of travelers and new thoughts on the road, and by the end has lost much of the sense of isolation that made his earlier aspirations to be one of the in-crowd so important. The economy of language and sustained intensity of feeling are as strongly reminiscent of Cynthia Rylant’s Missing May (1992) as are the wind toys and, at least in part, the theme, but Fleischman’s cast and mood are more varied, sometimes even comic, and it’s Brent’s long physical journey, paralleled by his inner one, that teaches him to look at the world and himself with new eyes. (Fiction. 12-14)
Pub Date: May 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-8050-5582-7
Page Count: 133
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1998
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