Sobering and convincing.
Twelve-year-old Lulu must care for her little sister when they are left homeless and alone.
The girls’ father disappears one morning from the Chevy Suburban in which he, Lulu, and Selena live. They’ve been in an RV park in Montana since driving up from Texas, where the girls’ mother died after a devastating, financially ruinous illness. For two weeks, Lulu manages to keep up the routine (food bank, laundromat, and picking up Selena from her after-school program), fending off queries about her dad. The narrative focus stays tightly with Lulu’s point of view, her understanding of the world informing her decisions. She’s afraid to ask for help, believing that she and Selena will be separated if anyone finds out about their situation. Lulu, the target of the contempt of some classmates, is befriended by both Jack, a boy who persuades her to try out for the school musical, and the town librarian, who unwittingly provides a refuge. Fox offers a message via Jack when he learns about Lulu’s life: “No one should have to live in a car.” Cranes—paper ones that Lulu and Selena fold, inspired by both the story of Hiroshima survivor Sadako Sasaki and the sandhill cranes migration—represent wishes granted and a kind of grace, leading to a satisfying, redemptive conclusion nicely pitched to a young audience. All the characters seem to be White.
Sobering and convincing. (author's note) (Fiction. 8-11)Pub Date: Aug. 24, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-5344-8508-2
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: June 1, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
Certain to elicit both gales of giggles and winces of sympathy (not to mention recognition) from young readers.
First volume of a planned three, this edited version of an ongoing online serial records a middle-school everykid’s triumphs and (more often) tribulations through the course of a school year.
Largely through his own fault, mishaps seem to plague Greg at every turn, from the minor freak-outs of finding himself permanently seated in class between two pierced stoners and then being saddled with his mom for a substitute teacher, to being forced to wrestle in gym with a weird classmate who has invited him to view his “secret freckle.” Presented in a mix of legible “hand-lettered” text and lots of simple cartoon illustrations with the punch lines often in dialogue balloons, Greg’s escapades, unwavering self-interest and sardonic commentary are a hoot and a half.
Certain to elicit both gales of giggles and winces of sympathy (not to mention recognition) from young readers. (Fiction. 9-11)Pub Date: April 1, 2007
ISBN: 0-8109-9313-9
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Amulet/Abrams
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2007
SEEN & HEARD
PERSPECTIVES
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