Worrying about what Dad and his new wife Marilyn are waiting to tell him during his upcoming visit (``nobody ever wants to tell you anything good in person''), Daniel ruminates over what previous events in his life—significant or seemingly insignificant—have turned out to be particularly memorable. In a clear, well-crafted narrative that will give young readers a first taste of the fictive entwining of past and present, the author weaves Daniel's memories, such as his parents laughing over a poker game or quarreling while he sits outside on the curb, into a sensitive picture of a child facing new uncertainties. Not surprisingly, Dad's news is neither a move far away nor another divorce, as Daniel has feared, but a new baby. Mom, Dad, and Marilyn all accept the boy's natural ambivalence with exemplary, if credibility-stretching, sensitivity (a touch inconsistent with those anxious days Dad's given Daniel between hinting at and delivering his news). Krudop (Blue Claws, 1993) provides sober, carefully composed full-color art that sympathetically captures the story's insights. It's a best-case situation, and Daniel, like his parents, is a bit too wise to be true, but the feelings, details, and Daniel's boyish narrative voice are all likably authentic. (Fiction. 6-9)
Pub Date: March 21, 1994
ISBN: 0-395-63310-9
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Clarion Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1994
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
As atmospheric as its companion, Twilight Comes Twice, this tone poem pairs poetically intense writing with luminescent oils featuring widely spaced houses, open lawns, and clumps of autumnal trees, all lit by a huge full moon. Fletcher tracks that moon’s nocturnal path in language rich in metaphor: “With silent slippers / it climbs the night stairs,” “staining earth and sky with a ghostly glow,” lighting up a child’s bedroom, the wings of a small plane, moonflowers, and, ranging further afield, harbor waves and the shells of turtle hatchlings on a beach. Using creamy brushwork and subtly muted colors, Kiesler depicts each landscape, each night creature from Luna moths to a sleepless child and her cat, as well as the great moon sweeping across star-flecked skies, from varied but never vertiginous angles. Closing with moonset, as dawn illuminates the world with a different kind of light, this makes peaceful reading either in season, or on any moonlit night. (Picture book. 6-8)
Pub Date: Sept. 22, 2003
ISBN: 0-618-16451-0
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Clarion Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2003
None
Exuding her usual air of competence, Ms. Frizzle drives the magic school bus to the beach, over the sand, and into the waves to take her wisecracking class on a tour of an intertidal zone, the continental shelf, the deep sea bottom, and a coral reef. Degen's paintings feature plenty of colorful (and unobtrusively labeled) sea life. As always, the pace is breathless, the facts well chosen, the excitement of scientific study neatly evoked, and Ms. Frizzle's wardrobe equal to every extraordinary occasion. At the end, her students assemble a bulletin board chart to summarize their observations and—apparently in response to adult anxieties—Cole closes with a quiz clarifying the difference between fact and fiction in the story. Yes, it's a formula, but a winning one. (Nonfiction. 6-8)
None NonePub Date: Sept. 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-590-41430-5
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1992
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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