The author of the well-received House on the Hill (1987) presents another Scottish family coming to terms with its past. Finn Lochlan and his dad, a teacher forced into early retirement, live with his recently widowed Granny on a farm that Mr. Lochlan is too depressed to manage. Finn's fantasy life centers on Hirsay, the desolate island where Grandpa grew up. When Douglas Cooper comes to do his agricultural training on their farm, all three respond; Finn, especially, warms to the big, hearty man. Then Douglas brings his son, 11 to Finn's 10, for a visit; at first, each boy is wary of the other, but when Finn learns that Chris has frailties to balance the strengths he envies, they become friends. Fulfilling Finn's lifelong dream, he joins the Coopers in an expedition to Hirsay in search of the rare ``pathan'' plant, a potent folk remedy bidding for medical recognition. Hirsay's forbidding weather and terrain manifest why Grandpa and other inhabitants were evacuated 60 years earlier, challenging Finn's idylls with stern reality; worse, heedless vandals have destroyed the pathan with a fire. It turns out, however, that Grandpa kept a small cache of the seeds. Despite some contrivance—e.g., a dramatic cliff-rescue demonstrating both Chris's mettle and Douglas's vulnerability- -these are thoughtfully developed people, and the meshing of their lives is both unusual and believable. (Fiction. 9-12)
Pub Date: April 15, 1992
ISBN: 0-8234-0910-4
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Holiday House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1992
Playing on his customary theme that children have more on the ball than adults give them credit for, Clements (Big Al and Shrimpy, p. 951, etc.) pairs a smart, unhappy, rich kid and a small-town teacher too quick to judge on appearances. Knowing that he’ll only be finishing up the term at the local public school near his new country home before hieing off to an exclusive academy, Mark makes no special effort to fit in, just sitting in class and staring moodily out the window. This rubs veteran science teacher Bill Maxwell the wrong way, big time, so that even after Mark realizes that he’s being a snot and tries to make amends, all he gets from Mr. Maxwell is the cold shoulder. Matters come to a head during a long-anticipated class camping trip; after Maxwell catches Mark with a forbidden knife (a camp mate’s, as it turns out) and lowers the boom, Mark storms off into the woods. Unaware that Mark is a well-prepared, enthusiastic (if inexperienced) hiker, Maxwell follows carelessly, sure that the “slacker” will be waiting for rescue around the next bend—and breaks his ankle running down a slope. Reconciliation ensues once he hobbles painfully into Mark’s neatly organized camp, and the two make their way back together. This might have some appeal to fans of Gary Paulsen’s or Will Hobbs’s more catastrophic survival tales, but because Clements pauses to explain—at length—everyone’s history, motives, feelings, and mindset, it reads more like a scenario (albeit an empowering one, at least for children) than a story. Worthy—but just as Maxwell underestimates his new student, so too does Clement underestimate his readers’ ability to figure out for themselves what’s going on in each character’s life and head. (Fiction. 10-12)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-689-82596-X
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2002
In 1948 the unorthodox Miss Agnes arrives to teach the children of an Athabascan Indian Village in remote Alaska. Ten-year-old Fred (Fredrika) matter-of-factly narrates this story of how a teacher transformed the school. Miss Agnes’s one-room schoolhouse is a progressive classroom, where the old textbooks are stored away first thing upon her arrival. The children learn to read using handmade books that are about their own village and lives: winter trapping camps, tanning moose hides, fishing, and curing the catch, etc. Math is a lesson on how not to get cheated when selling animal pelts. These young geographers learn about the world on a huge map that covers one whole schoolhouse wall. Fred is pitch-perfect in her observations of the village residents. “Little Pete made a picture of his dad’s trapline cabin . . . He was proud of that picture, I could tell, because he kept making fun of it.” Hill (Winter Camp, 1993, etc.) creates a community of realistically unique adults and children that is rich in the detail of their daily lives. Big Pete is as small and scrappy, as his son Little Pete is huge, gentle, and kind. Fred’s 12-year-old deaf sister, Bokko, has her father’s smile and has never gone to school until Miss Agnes. Charlie-Boy is so physically adept at age 6 that he is the best runner, thrower, and catcher of all the children. These are just a few of the residents in this rural community. The school year is not without tension. Will Bokko continue in school? Will Mama stay angry with Miss Agnes? And most important, who will be their teacher after Miss Agnes leaves? A quiet, yet satisfying account. (Fiction. 9-11)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-689-82933-7
Page Count: 128
Publisher: McElderry
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2000
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