Despite these shortcomings, however, this debut is an inventive story with a fresh setting and an upstanding moral compass.
This middle-grade ghostly mystery delivers a timely message.
Life on tiny Bald Island is fragile—but for 12-year-old Spirit Holden, who moved there with her father six years earlier, it is home. To the islanders, the Holdens will always be “dingbatters”—outsiders—but their superstitious natures appreciate Spirit’s father’s gift of second sight, since they believe it protects them from the harsh natural elements as well as the baldies—the island’s feral dogs. Even Spirit’s pet baldie, Sky, cannot sway the islanders’ belief that the dogs are evil. Cohn reflects on insular attitudes in an isolated region as she spins a story about fear of the unknown. When baldies begin turning up dead (including Spirit’s beloved Sky) and people fall sick, islanders begin blaming the Holdens. With the help of Sky, who returns as a sort of canis ex machina ghost, Spirit uncovers the secret to the baldies’ deaths, discovers her own power and convinces the islanders that superstition and narrow thinking are the real dangers. The story’s worthy theme of tolerance would be more effective if it were not trotted out quite so regularly, and the pacing often drags when action seems most dictated—a casualty of the same tendency to overexplain.
Despite these shortcomings, however, this debut is an inventive story with a fresh setting and an upstanding moral compass. (Fantasy. 9-12)Pub Date: Sept. 9, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-374-30011-1
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: June 9, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
A real gem.
A 10-year old girl learns to adjust to a strange town, makes some fascinating friends, and fills the empty space in her heart thanks to a big old stray dog in this lyrical, moving, and enchanting book by a fresh new voice.
India Opal’s mama left when she was only three, and her father, “the preacher,” is absorbed in his own loss and in the work of his new ministry at the Open-Arms Baptist Church of Naomi [Florida]. Enter Winn-Dixie, a dog who “looked like a big piece of old brown carpet that had been left out in the rain.” But, this dog had a grin “so big that it made him sneeze.” And, as Opal says, “It’s hard not to immediately fall in love with a dog who has a good sense of humor.” Because of Winn-Dixie, Opal meets Miss Franny Block, an elderly lady whose papa built her a library of her own when she was just a little girl and she’s been the librarian ever since. Then, there’s nearly blind Gloria Dump, who hangs the empty bottle wreckage of her past from the mistake tree in her back yard. And, Otis, oh yes, Otis, whose music charms the gerbils, rabbits, snakes and lizards he’s let out of their cages in the pet store. Brush strokes of magical realism elevate this beyond a simple story of friendship to a well-crafted tale of community and fellowship, of sweetness, sorrow and hope. And, it’s funny, too.
A real gem. (Fiction. 9-12)Pub Date: March 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-7636-0776-2
Page Count: 182
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2000
SEEN & HEARD
Entrancing and uplifting.
A small dog, the elderly woman who owns him, and a homeless girl come together to create a tale of serendipity.
Piper, almost 12, her parents, and her younger brother are at the bottom of a long slide toward homelessness. Finally in a family shelter, Piper finds that her newfound safety gives her the opportunity to reach out to someone who needs help even more. Jewel, mentally ill, lives in the park with her dog, Baby. Unwilling to leave her pet, and forbidden to enter the shelter with him, she struggles with the winter weather. Ree, also homeless and with a large dog, helps when she can, but after Jewel gets sick and is hospitalized, Baby’s taken to the animal shelter, and Ree can’t manage the complex issues alone. It’s Piper, using her best investigative skills, who figures out Jewel’s backstory. Still, she needs all the help of the shelter Firefly Girls troop that she joins to achieve her accomplishment: to raise enough money to provide Jewel and Baby with a secure, hopeful future and, maybe, with their kindness, to inspire a happier story for Ree. Told in the authentic alternating voices of loving child and loyal dog, this tale could easily slump into a syrupy melodrama, but Pyron lets her well-drawn characters earn their believable happy ending, step by challenging step, by reaching out and working together. Piper, her family, and Jewel present white; Pyron uses hair and naming convention, respectively, to cue Ree as black and Piper’s friend Gabriela as Latinx.
Entrancing and uplifting. (Fiction. 9-12)Pub Date: Aug. 13, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-06-283922-0
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Katherine Tegen/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: April 9, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2019
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