The author of Get Shorty turns to children’s books with a character study of three very different types. Antwan is a Hollywood Hills coyote who talks like he’s straight from the ’hood; Buddy is a German shepherd, a former movie star whose light has gone dim; Miss Betty is the show poodle who lives with Buddy. When Antwan chases a mouse into Buddy and Miss Betty’s back yard, he ends up moving right in—the idea is that he and Buddy are going to trade experiences, he as a pampered house pet and Buddy as a wild dog of the hills. Leonard’s characterization is both broad and gentle: each canine begins as a stereotype, but it soon becomes apparent that all three have become the roles they play in life, and it’s the growing friendship that allows each to explore different personae. The plot meanders a bit, with a catnapping and a movie audition thrown in to complicate the relationships, but in the end, it’s a cheerful and ultimately bittersweet look at how life choices shape who we are. Good fun. (Fiction. 9-13)
Pub Date: June 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-06-054404-X
Page Count: 160
Publisher: HarperEntertainment
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
If it were a Golden Age comic, this tale of ridiculous science, space dogs and humanoid aliens with flashlights in their hands might not be bad. Alas... Number Four is a fugitive from the planet Lorien, which is sloppily described as both "hundreds of lightyears away" and "billions of miles away." Along with eight other children and their caretakers, Number Four escaped from the Mogadorian invasion of Lorien ten years ago. Now the nine children are scattered on Earth, hiding. Luckily and fairly nonsensically, the planet's Elders cast a charm on them so they could only be killed in numerical order, but children one through three are dead, and Number Four is next. Too bad he's finally gained a friend and a girlfriend and doesn't want to run. At least his newly developing alien powers means there will be screen-ready combat and explosions. Perhaps most idiotic, "author" Pittacus Lore is a character in this fiction—but the first-person narrator is someone else entirely. Maybe this is a natural extension of lightly hidden actual author James Frey's drive to fictionalize his life, but literature it ain't. (Science fiction. 11-13)
Pub Date: Aug. 17, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-06-196955-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2010
The poem/novel ends with only a trace of hope; there are no pat endings, but a glimpse of beauty wrought from brutal reality.
Billie Jo tells of her life in Oklahoma during the Dust Bowl: Her mother dies after a gruesome accident caused by her father's leaving a bucket of kerosene near the stove; Billie Jo is partially responsible—fully responsible in the eyes of the community—and sustains injuries that seem to bring to a halt her dreams of playing the piano.
Finding a way through her grief is not made easier by her taciturn father, who went on a drinking binge while Billie Joe's mother, not yet dead, begged for water. Told in free-verse poetry of dated entries that span the winter of 1934 to the winter of 1935, this is an unremittingly bleak portrait of one corner of Depression-era life. In Billie Jo, the only character who comes to life, Hesse (The Music of Dolphins, 1996, etc.) presents a hale and determined heroine who confronts unrelenting misery and begins to transcend it.
The poem/novel ends with only a trace of hope; there are no pat endings, but a glimpse of beauty wrought from brutal reality. (Fiction. 9-12)Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1997
ISBN: 978-0-590-36080-7
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1997
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