Nine fairytales are given shimmering and scary shape in very modern dress, with Block’s luminescent, darkling prose. The one-word titles evoke but do not prescribe. In “Snow,” a screaming child who quiets in the arms of the gardener is given over by him to a houseful of self-described freaks—seven men with the names of animals, who are not-quite-fathers to her. It is the gardener who awakens Snow from her poisoned sleep, but she rejects him to choose the life she knows with the seven. “Wolf” reconfigures the Red Riding Hood story in a harrowing tale of incest and sorrow; “Rose” is a powerful metaphor of the bond between sisters, Rose White and Rose Red, and how emergent eroticism looses that tie. “Bones” recasts Bluebeard as a sinister L.A. promoter. The place of California dreams, desert light, and movieland glitz familiar in other Block books is her fairy landscape, repopulated with girls who have rose tattoos and remember River Phoenix. She uses language like a jeweled sword, glittering as it cuts to the heart. Readers who thrilled to Donohue’s Kissing the Witch (1997) and Donna Jo Napoli’s Zel (1996) will find similar dark magic here. (Fiction. YA)
Pub Date: Oct. 31, 2000
ISBN: 0-06-028129-4
Page Count: 240
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2000
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The format of this taut and moving drama forcefully regulates the pacing; breathless, edge-of-the-seat courtroom scenes...
In a riveting novel from Myers (At Her Majesty’s Request, 1999, etc.), a teenager who dreams of being a filmmaker writes the story of his trial for felony murder in the form of a movie script, with journal entries after each day’s action.
Steve is accused of being an accomplice in the robbery and murder of a drug store owner. As he goes through his trial, returning each night to a prison where most nights he can hear other inmates being beaten and raped, he reviews the events leading to this point in his life. Although Steve is eventually acquitted, Myers leaves it up to readers to decide for themselves on his protagonist’s guilt or innocence.
The format of this taut and moving drama forcefully regulates the pacing; breathless, edge-of-the-seat courtroom scenes written entirely in dialogue alternate with thoughtful, introspective journal entries that offer a sense of Steve’s terror and confusion, and that deftly demonstrate Myers’s point: the road from innocence to trouble is comprised of small, almost invisible steps, each involving an experience in which a “positive moral decision” was not made. (Fiction. 12-14)Pub Date: May 31, 1999
ISBN: 0-06-028077-8
Page Count: 280
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1999
PERSPECTIVES
Paulsen recalls personal experiences that he incorporated into Hatchet (1987) and its three sequels, from savage attacks by moose and mosquitoes to watching helplessly as a heart-attack victim dies. As usual, his real adventures are every bit as vivid and hair-raising as those in his fiction, and he relates them with relish—discoursing on “The Fine Art of Wilderness Nutrition,” for instance: “Something that you would never consider eating, something completely repulsive and ugly and disgusting, something so gross it would make you vomit just looking at it, becomes absolutely delicious if you’re starving.” Specific examples follow, to prove that he knows whereof he writes. The author adds incidents from his Iditarod races, describes how he made, then learned to hunt with, bow and arrow, then closes with methods of cooking outdoors sans pots or pans. It’s a patchwork, but an entertaining one, and as likely to win him new fans as to answer questions from his old ones. (Autobiography. 10-13)
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-385-32650-5
Page Count: 150
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2000
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