A morbid yet warmhearted fantasy about the circle of death.
A teenager imagines how a corpse could become the neighborhood kids’ source of amusement, companionship, and legend in this debut illustrated book.
White narrator Jay and his friend Carl, who is black, grow up as “just poor city kids with a faint spark of hope,” finding simple joys where they can. When they were younger, they could form a club or make a fort; now they’re old enough for “girls and sports.” When a fancy hearse glides down the street, Jay and Carl are taken with its style, the narrator thinking he’d be proud “to posthumously cruise town in such taste.” Carl agrees, asking Jay to ensure that he gets a last cruise in a hearse. If the funeral is expensive, “have the hearse drop me off in some random ravine.” The idea sparks an extended fantasy in which Jay imagines how entertaining it would be for a couple of kids, maybe in fifth or sixth grade, to discover Carl’s body. They’d start a club centered on Carl’s corpse with games, “gross inspirations, / And grosser initiations, / New heights of grossness, new legends untold.” Carl, who in life would have been childless, could in death watch these kids grow up. And, even if the original discoverers outgrow Carl, they could find a replacement and “leave the body on a lawn, / For new kids to poke, prod and cherish.” In his short, humorous book, Edwards tells the story in triolet pairs rhyming AAB, CCB, with somewhat uneven scansion. More importantly, the tale has an offbeat sense of the macabre that’s original, surprising, and fun: Stephen King’s The Body meets Sesame Street. The idea that a corpse dumped in a bog could become a secret friend and clubhouse centerpiece is bizarre, yet children are fascinated by death and lured by the power of knowing something that adults don’t. The author’s illustrations have a cool, distinctive style, depicting elongated limbs and wedgelike noses. Watercolorist Hayes, in her debut, effectively contrasts the subject matter with a soft, attractive palette.
A morbid yet warmhearted fantasy about the circle of death.Pub Date: April 7, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5255-2254-3
Page Count: 44
Publisher: FriesenPress
Review Posted Online: March 14, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
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