Wilson pushes so much pain between the lines of this portrait of a foster child with the personality of a steamroller that it comes off less a lightweight tribute to human resilience than a pathos-ridden tale of children acting out as they nurse profound inner wounds. Ever ready to lash out verbally or physically, Tracy swaggers through her account of life in the group home to which her second pair of foster parents have returned her, meanwhile leaning heavily on the thin hope that her long-gone mother will return to her. Readers will easily see through all the tough talk to the vulnerability within, as she browbeats Peter, a younger housemate, while drawing on personal experience to help him cope with persistent bedwetting; passes from denial through defiance to trying for a truce after breaking archrival Justine’s most prized possession (a cheap alarm clock from her father); and goes relentlessly to work on Cam, a visiting journalist, to take her as a foster child. Interspersed line drawings done in a childlike style, and letters exchanged by Tracy and Cam, fail to lift the heavy mood. By the end, Cam has still not come around—but readers may be too annoyed by Tracy’s rude, aggressive character to care. (Fiction. 10-12)
Pub Date: Aug. 14, 2001
ISBN: 0-385-72919-7
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2001
SEEN & HEARD
When Parker Nolan sees a spy sneak out of Coach Isaac's office, his penchant for telling wild stories comes back to haunt him: his teammates laugh him off when he tries to tell them that a copy of the Kensington Kudzus' secret playbook has fallen into their rivals' hands. As usual, Christopher enlivens this moral tale about the value of truth with plenty of sports action. The Kudzus take a drubbing on the field until, desperate, they begin to improvise and ultimately carry the day, after which Parker tricks the malefactor—none other that Spike Newton, the Kudzus' money-hungry quarterback—into the open. Quick, easily read, and predictable. Illustrations not seen. (Fiction. 10-12)
Pub Date: Dec. 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-316-14251-4
Page Count: 145
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 1992
Excessively enlarged, overdramatic color photos and a rather lurid text will attract readers to this oversize book, but the whole is unsatisfying even as an introduction to jungle layers, wildlife, people, and the implications of deforestation. The photos may appear to be almost three-dimensional, but they are poorly placed. Some are lost in the gutter: in one double spread, the head of a scarlet macaw appears to be growing out of the wing of a fruit bat. Scientific names and size information are not given (is the tailless whip scorpion really huge, or just extremely enlarged in the photo?), and often intriguing facts (flying snakes, fuzzy- tongued parakeets) are undocumented. Marginal. Index. (Nonfiction. 10-12)
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-385-41412-9
Page Count: 45
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1992
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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