This shoddy animal fantasy fails on all levels. Main mouse Crycket and cousin Sylan are 12 years old—just one of many mathematical and cultural details that anthropomorphize them beyond any sense of rodentness. Crycket and Sylan fulfill the classic fantasy trope of unknown parentage and secret royal lineage. Broken truces and betrayals between individuals and warring factions (mice, rats, frogs) set the boys on a path of travel-fight-travel-fight. The violence—multiple battle deaths; branding; a grandparent impaled, another burned alive—feels meaningless and distant because every prose element is substandard. Modifiers overflow, most nouns sporting at least one adjective, sometimes two or three. Frequent use of “quickly,” “suddenly” and “instantly” fail to spur the pace. Narration explains points twice in a row. Back story information is dry, ostensibly gnomic headings trite and useless (“A warrior who knows how to fight will choose wisely”). Grammar mistakes and word misuse abound. Editing and copyediting seem absent but wouldn’t have saved this marketing tie-in for two already-existing collectible figurines ($39.99 each). (Fantasy. 9-11)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2009
ISBN: 978-1-4022-1171-3
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Sourcebooks Jabberwocky
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2009
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
SEEN & HEARD
Reports of children requesting rewrites of The Reluctant Dragon are rare at best, but this new version may be pleasing to young or adult readers less attuned to the pleasures of literary period pieces. Along with modernizing the language—“Hmf! This Beowulf fellow had a severe anger management problem”—DiTerlizzi dials down the original’s violence. The red-blooded Boy is transformed into a pacifistic bunny named Kenny, St. George is just George the badger, a retired knight who owns a bookstore, and there is no actual spearing (or, for that matter, references to the annoyed knight’s “Oriental language”) in the climactic show-fight with the friendly, crème-brulée-loving dragon Grahame. In look and spirit, the author’s finely detailed drawings of animals in human dress are more in the style of Lynn Munsinger than, for instance, Ernest Shepard or Michael Hague. They do, however, nicely reflect the bright, informal tone of the text. A readable, if denatured, rendition of a faded classic. (Fantasy. 9-11)
Pub Date: Aug. 5, 2008
ISBN: 978-1-4169-3977-1
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2008
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