Nimbly plotted and deftly insightful.
A two-week mother-daughter backpacking trip on Minnesota’s Superior Hiking Trail brings both insight and misery.
Twelve-year-old Jo was looking forward to a promised backpacking trip with her father, when he abruptly abandoned the family for another woman and her children. Jo’s mother, newly divorced and unhappy—and not a hiker—nevertheless gamely volunteered to make the trek with Jo. As the two inexperienced hikers set out with everything they need in heavy backpacks on their backs, Jo’s primary motivation is to go farther than the 100 miles that her dad hiked with Jake, her older brother, when he was 12. Authentic in its depiction of the exhaustion, blisters, wrenched knees, boring dehydrated food, gross latrines, and wildlife dangers that make up a multiday backpacking adventure, the story also deftly contains a nuanced storyline as Jo struggles with not only her physical discomfort but her emotional discomfort as well. She lacks confidence in herself, feels she needs to protect her overwhelmed mother, and has deeply conflicting emotions about her dad. Jo’s love of reading (she brings The Hobbit with her, and other classics feature in the plot) gets a clear shout-out, and her sometimes funny, sometimes gritty, and ofttimes just plain miserable outlook avoids giving the neatly wrapped-up insights a preachy feel. Jo and her mother read white; important secondary characters include an interracial lesbian couple.
Nimbly plotted and deftly insightful. (maps, author’s note, glossary with photos) (Fiction. 9-12)Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2024
ISBN: 9781338851304
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: March 23, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2024
However the compelling fitness of theme and event and the apt but unexpected imagery (the opening sentences compare the...
At a time when death has become an acceptable, even voguish subject in children's fiction, Natalie Babbitt comes through with a stylistic gem about living forever.
Protected Winnie, the ten-year-old heroine, is not immortal, but when she comes upon young Jesse Tuck drinking from a secret spring in her parents' woods, she finds herself involved with a family who, having innocently drunk the same water some 87 years earlier, haven't aged a moment since. Though the mood is delicate, there is no lack of action, with the Tucks (previously suspected of witchcraft) now pursued for kidnapping Winnie; Mae Tuck, the middle aged mother, striking and killing a stranger who is onto their secret and would sell the water; and Winnie taking Mae's place in prison so that the Tucks can get away before she is hanged from the neck until....? Though Babbitt makes the family a sad one, most of their reasons for discontent are circumstantial and there isn't a great deal of wisdom to be gleaned from their fate or Winnie's decision not to share it.
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1975
ISBN: 0312369816
Page Count: 164
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: April 13, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1975
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
Charming, poignant, and thoughtfully woven.
An aspiring scientist and a budding artist become friends and help each other with dream projects.
Unfolding in mid-1980s Sacramento, California, this story stars 12-year-olds Rosalind and Benjamin as first-person narrators in alternating chapters. Ro’s father, a fellow space buff, was killed by a drunk driver; the rocket they were working on together lies unfinished in her closet. As for Benji, not only has his best friend, Amir, moved away, but the comic book holding the clue for locating his dad is also missing. Along with their profound personal losses, the protagonists share a fixation with the universe’s intriguing potential: Ro decides to complete the rocket and hopes to launch mementos of her father into outer space while Benji’s conviction that aliens and UFOs are real compels his imagination and creativity as an artist. An accident in science class triggers a chain of events forcing Benji and Ro, who is new to the school, to interact and unintentionally learn each other’s secrets. They resolve to find Benji’s dad—a famous comic-book artist—and partner to finish Ro’s rocket for the science fair. Together, they overcome technical, scheduling, and geographical challenges. Readers will be drawn in by amusing and fantastical elements in the comic book theme, high emotional stakes that arouse sympathy, and well-drawn character development as the protagonists navigate life lessons around grief, patience, self-advocacy, and standing up for others. Ro is biracial (Chinese/White); Benji is White.
Charming, poignant, and thoughtfully woven. (Fiction. 9-12)Pub Date: Jan. 12, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-06-300888-5
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Quill Tree Books/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Oct. 26, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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