From Wilson (The Suitcase Kid, 1997, etc.), a lightweight British import that is a telling study of twindom's trials and tribulations. Doing their best to make everyone miserable in the process, ten-year-old identical twins Ruby and Garnet reluctantly adapt to changes in their family and themselves in this revealing double journal. As close in other ways as twins can be, Ruby is otherwise as rude and bossy as Garnet is shy and wimpy. Ruby doesn't like Rose, the new woman in their father Richard's life, nor his decision to move to a small town and open a bookshop, nor their new teacher, nor their classmates, so Garnet trails along on a campaign of pranks and bad behavior, offering only token resistance. Then the twins, at Ruby's instigation, take an entrance exam for an expensive boarding school and only Garnet is offered a scholarship. Wilson works with a broad brush, exaggerating the differences in the twins' personalities, and endowing Rose and Richard with inhuman funds of patience. While readers will spend most of the book wondering why Ruby wasn't strangled long ago, she takes the impending separation from her twin so much harder than Garnet that she becomes a tragic figure. In the end, the two part with hugs and tears, and start making new friends almost immediately. Their alternating accountsRuby's long and chatty, Garnet's short but eloquentare illustrated with simple black-and-white drawings, each twin done by a different artist, to no distinguishable effect. (Fiction. 9-11)
Pub Date: March 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-385-32312-3
Page Count: 185
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1998
PLB 0-06-028362-9 Ross reduces a topic as enigmatic and multi-faceted as friendship to didacticism and platitudes. “Friends come in all different sizes and shapes and colors,” the text intones; friends can be big and small, new and old, best and imaginary. The things Ross suggests pals do together—take new experiences, confide troubles, have an adventure, share—will hardly be news to children, and becomes somewhat bald in these pages. The asides are worse: “It’s not the size of your friends that counts. It is the size of your heart” and “It doesn’t matter how many friends you have. . . . It’s quality, not quantity, that counts!” Some people won’t mind the presentation; the bestseller lists are full of such volumes as Ross and Rader’s A Book of Hugs; still, most children will want to dodge the finger-wagging. (Picture book. 3-7)
Pub Date: April 30, 1999
ISBN: 0-06-028170-7
Page Count: 40
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1999
PLB 0-517-80012-8 Rockwell (who illustrated Anne Rockwell’s Halloween Day, 1997, etc.) focuses on a young boy as he and his family prepare for the birth of his baby sister. The precocious narrator confidently discusses the growth of the baby in his mommy’s womb and describes visits to the obstetrician to hear the baby’s heartbeat. Also covered are the arrangements for the boy’s care while his mother is in labor, the hospital visit, and baby’s arrival at home. The young narrator reflects on how his baby sister is not yet used to the concept of day and night and when she, at one point, becomes inconsolable, he fetches a favorite toy to soothe her. In a refreshing departure from other books about siblings, this one does not address negative feelings of anxiety, trepidation, or jealousy. Instead, the approach of the text is optimistic, reflected in Rockwell’s bright, cheerful illustrations. Age-appropriate pictures cover fetal development, including a wonderfully informative spread entitled “How a baby grows,” charting the period from conception to term. An upbeat, encouraging account. (Picture book. 5-8)
Pub Date: April 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-517-80011-X
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1999
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