A weak tale of five brothers and sisters trying to take care of themselves while their hard-working mother gets some rest. When she wins a two-week cruise, Tillie, Trudy, Rob, Pete, and Sherman urge her to go; after all, Grandpa Marsh lives in the apartment over the garage. Initial bickering soon flares into outright rebellion when the eldest, Tillie, tries to serve salad for dinner. They decide to take turns being in charge, in descending order of age. That doesn't last long; Trudy serves fried chicken two nights running, and when Rob orders Sherman, the youngest, to put his huge dog Tip out in the yard, boy and dog run away (beneath the porch). With grown-ups never far away, the young people see little risk or need for self-reliance, and the tale ends on a distinctly minor note: Sherman tells Rob to stop ordering him around. Clifford (Harvey's Mystifying Raccoon Mix-Up, 1994, etc.) barely begins to exploit her premise for either comedy or drama, and her characters' foibles are more described than shown. Too undeveloped to satisfy. (Fiction. 9-11)
Pub Date: April 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-395-73571-8
Page Count: 95
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 1995
BOOK REVIEW
A professional storyteller shares fond, slightly elongated, memories of his grandfather, and of childhood encounters with six remarkable animals. Taking his grandfather's advice to ``start with the facts and go on from there,'' Moore recalls the clever way the old man taught a trout to breathe air, negotiated a lasting peace with marauding groundhogs, and persuaded a hen-hatched eagle that it wasn't a chicken. The author describes the scary time he brought a stuffed bear to life by imitating the grunt of a female, and puts a new twist on a tale at least as old as Baron MÅnchhausen, about a deer shot between the antlers with a cherry pit. For all his hunting and fishing, the old man never seems to kill anything (except the bear, and that's not intentional), captivities are only temporary, and an appreciation of the natural world buoys each of these episodes. A compact and engrossing follow-up to When The Moon Is Full (Knopf, 1994). (Fiction/Short stories. 9-11)
Pub Date: April 20, 1995
ISBN: 0-679-85641-2
Page Count: 112
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1995
In another collaboration with Howell, Wood (Dancing Moons, 1995, etc.) uses poetry and prose to tell of the Pueblo people of the Southwest, a story at once melancholy and wonderfully dense with cultural landscapes. The hardship suffered by the Pueblos after the Spanish occupation brings a concurrent sense of survivance, and of holding tight to the cosmology, rituals, and pacing of their everyday lives. The story is told by the Old Man, guardian of the Sacred Fire, one of the four great elements and symbolic of longevity, hope, wisdom, and purification. While the Sacred Flame is central to the book, Wood ranges far and wide, into Sun Dances and corn ceremonies, community and tradition. The poems can be incantatory; some are simple explication (“What came with us in the Beginning Time?/Turtle Spirit./What comforted us in the Middle Way?/Buffalo Spirit”), while others are more elusive (“We are afraid to remember obsidian,/because it reminds us of pain”). Salted between poems are pieces through which Old Man fills the gaps, sketches in the memories, locates what abides: spirit, humility, grace, generosity. Howell’s artwork is arresting, with an emotional lucidity that conveys powerful people, facing adversity without losing their way. (Poetry. 9-11)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-385-32515-0
Page Count: 74
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1998
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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