A pleasing, well-judged blend of genres with a good resolution.
In this middle-grade chapter book, private detective Goldilocks takes the case of a man whose missing grandparents have been replaced by bears.
After her father dies, 10-year-old Goldilocks inherits the family business: a private detective agency, which she runs with her cat, Charlotte, in the town of Lick Skillet. Money is tight, the rent is overdue, and she must do her best to avoid the wild-haired Tom the Kid-Snatcher, who rounds up kids without parents for the local orphanage. (He even occasionally kidnaps children who aren’t orphans: “He was that kind of kid-snatcher.”) Goldilocks advertises her detecting services, and her first client is a man named Frank Sims who wants her to find his missing grandparents—and figure out why bears are now living in their house. She’s glad to take the case, but her client’s grandparents live in the nearby Black Forest, which is notoriously full of scary creatures, and she’ll have to pass near the orphanage, besides. In order to avoid some dangers, including Tom, Goldilocks leaves the safe forest path; luckily, she meets Patty, an orphanage escapee who lives in the forest. The girls become friends and partners, solving the mystery and alerting authorities to the orphans’ mistreatment. Trine (Willy Maykit in Space, 2015, etc.) skillfully mixes fairy tales and detective fiction with a coming-of-age story about braving danger to prove oneself. Such elements could easily become rather dark, and Trine does touch on serious issues (including Goldilocks’ money problems), but moments of humor help to lighten the story. For example, Tom’s horse-drawn jail, the Patty Wagon, is named after his most recent captive: “With any luck he’d soon change the name to the Goldie Wagon.” The girl-power message is also appealing. Baykovska (The Nasty Princess, 2018, etc.) provides lighthearted, cartoonish black-and-white pencil illustrations for each chapter head; these offer nice details, such as the fact that Tom bears some resemblance to Struwwelpeter, a character from a well-known 1845 children’s book.
A pleasing, well-judged blend of genres with a good resolution.Pub Date: Aug. 31, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-73395-892-9
Page Count: 114
Publisher: Time Tunnel Media
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her...
Another middle-aged mom in a muddle.
After years of false starts and big hopes, Elizabeth’s ruggedly handsome husband Jack, a former football star, just landed a spot as a sportscaster on national news. He still loves her, even though much younger women are giving him come-hither looks. Heck, he doesn’t want to betray the love of his life after she helped him kick drugs and stuck by him even when he was a struggling has-been. And won’t it seem hypocritical if he fools around with his sexy assistant while he does in-depth reporting on a rape case involving a famous basketball center? Well, he fools around anyway. Elizabeth, nicknamed Birdie, knows nothing of this, but she withdraws from Jack when her hard-drinking, salt-of-the-earth father has a stroke and dies. Now no one will call her “sugar beet” ever again. Time to return home to Tennessee and contend with Anita, the sort-of-evil stepmother so trashy she wears pink puffy slippers all day long. Naturally, it turns out that Anita actually has a heart of gold and knows a few things about Birdie’s dead mother that were hushed up for years. Mom was an artist, just like Birdie, and an old scandal comes to light as Anita unrolls a vibrant canvas that portrays her secret lover. Perhaps, Birdie muses, her mother died of heartbreak, never having followed her true love or developed her talent. Has she, too, compromised everything she holds dear? Hoping to find out, Birdie joins a support group that promises to reconnect confused women with their passion. She and Jack separate, prompting a how-dare-you fit from their grown daughters. Will Birdie fly her empty nest? Will she go back to college for a degree in art? Will her brooding watercolors ever sell?
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her previous tales (Summer Island, 2001, etc.).Pub Date: July 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-345-45071-X
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2002
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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