What looks like another kid-with-problem-parents-goes-through- summer-of-change book turns out to be a sensitive picture of a girl countering disruption and death with personal growth. While her mother is dying of cancer, Tommy is sent to stay with her estranged father (Jud) in Maine. Prickly, unfriendly, and critical, Tommy resents her obnoxious aunt (a nurse, who banished her), the harbor town, and Jud, whose home is an untidy shambles and whom she blames for her parents' split. Still, she cleans up the house, accepts a job, and tries to sound upbeat in letters home. In return, her mother writes about her marriage and Tommy's birth, in installments that parallel the present: she too was a ``summer girl'' who got involved with a ``local.'' There the semblance ends: dumping Tommy's father for another man, her mother left Jud so stricken that he barely survived. Though some of the events here are melodramatic, their handling is subtle. Assimilating her mother's revelations and learning to cope with her new life, Tommy grows in understanding; while her immediate reaction to the past's betrayals is never explicitly portrayed, her rages against her father are believable, as are his fumbling but ultimately successful efforts to make a home for the 13-year-old daughter he has always loved from afar. Like Jean Thesman's novels, an engrossing read that offers strong characters and real values. (Fiction. 10-14)
Pub Date: April 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-8037-1153-0
Page Count: 133
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1992
Seventh grade is getting the better of Wilf Farkus until, for a science project, he buys a kit for ``OceanPups'' that grow not the expected brine shrimp but an instant clone. The ``other Wilf'' has a computerlike mind and—after a few hours of listening to radio—the language and personality of a DJ. The ``real'' Wilf sends him off to school in his place and—with some fancy footwork—manages to keep the fact that there are two of him a secret until he's kidnapped by two bumbling but sinister geneticists who explain that the mix-up was caused by a lab accident. Enter Wilf (the newer one), loyally dashing to the rescue. After a mad chase, the police arrive; when the dust settles, the other Wilf has become a brand-new, suddenly orphaned ``Cousin Steve'' sharing the real Wilf's bedroom. For Beatrice Gormley fans, a well-thought-out, antic adventure. (Fiction. 11-14)
Pub Date: May 1, 1991
ISBN: 0-316-76376-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1991
Tony's father hasn't been home in months; his mother Eileen spends days ``sick'' in bed, leaving four-year-old Christy on her own. Only on the baseball field does Tony feel safe and in control. Gradually, he realizes that his mother's illness is not flu but alcoholism. When she is hospitalized after a fall, Dad returns, admitting that he had fled the problem rather than face it; he patiently bears Tony's hot anger, and by the end they are friends, waiting for Eileen—still at the denial stage—to come home. Tony performs heroically in several games, but the baseball action takes a backseat to his bitter discovery that his parents are imperfect. With insight, Anderson, author of Coming Home: Children's Stories for Adult Children of Alcoholics (1988), explores the effects (though not the causes) of alcoholism on a family, properly offering no easy solutions. (Fiction. 10-13)
Pub Date: Sept. 30, 1992
ISBN: 0-689-31686-0
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Atheneum
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1992
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