The web of life is revealed in all its intricacy when Tony Isidoro, an eighth grader who has inherited the zoology project interrupted by his older brother's call to army service, works with the local mill owner's 12-year-old daughter, and later with his brother's zoologist friend from the college, to solve a murder that has baffled and grieved the town of Saddleboro. The case opens when the town's mayor, an opportunist who won election on an ecology platform, makes political capital and daily radio announcements — not to mention a gala Cock Robin Day picnic — of a family of robins that nests in his hat. When the robins embarrass him by dying, the mayor asks Tony to discover the cause; later the boy's investigations prove equally embarrassing, but Tony determinedly tracks down the culprits. His sleuthing reveals that the mayor's lawn fertilizer has polluted the local marsh, that mother robin and her eggs were done in by a chemical called PCB, released by the mill owner under orders from NASA and combined with DDT from an up-wind orchard and a weed killer called 2, 4, 5-T, and finally that Cock Robin himself was killed, true to the old song, by the sparrow — or at least by the chain set off when 10,000 Florida sparrows died from eating mercury-treated seeds, causing millions of blood-sucking parasitic flies to leave their bodies and attack the migrating robins. The tone of the whole adventure is buoyant, and the ecological complexities that constitute its theme are so neatly reflected in the plot that the scientific search for Cock Robin's murderer has an edge-of-the-chair excitement.
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1971
ISBN: 0064404056
Page Count: 210
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1971
Charming, poignant, and thoughtfully woven.
An aspiring scientist and a budding artist become friends and help each other with dream projects.
Unfolding in mid-1980s Sacramento, California, this story stars 12-year-olds Rosalind and Benjamin as first-person narrators in alternating chapters. Ro’s father, a fellow space buff, was killed by a drunk driver; the rocket they were working on together lies unfinished in her closet. As for Benji, not only has his best friend, Amir, moved away, but the comic book holding the clue for locating his dad is also missing. Along with their profound personal losses, the protagonists share a fixation with the universe’s intriguing potential: Ro decides to complete the rocket and hopes to launch mementos of her father into outer space while Benji’s conviction that aliens and UFOs are real compels his imagination and creativity as an artist. An accident in science class triggers a chain of events forcing Benji and Ro, who is new to the school, to interact and unintentionally learn each other’s secrets. They resolve to find Benji’s dad—a famous comic-book artist—and partner to finish Ro’s rocket for the science fair. Together, they overcome technical, scheduling, and geographical challenges. Readers will be drawn in by amusing and fantastical elements in the comic book theme, high emotional stakes that arouse sympathy, and well-drawn character development as the protagonists navigate life lessons around grief, patience, self-advocacy, and standing up for others. Ro is biracial (Chinese/White); Benji is White.
Charming, poignant, and thoughtfully woven. (Fiction. 9-12)Pub Date: Jan. 12, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-06-300888-5
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Quill Tree Books/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Oct. 26, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Just the thing for anyone with a Grinch-y tree of their own in the yard.
A grouchy sapling on a Christmas tree farm finds that there are better things than lights and decorations for its branches.
A Grinch among the other trees on the farm is determined never to become a sappy Christmas tree—and never to leave its spot. Its determination makes it so: It grows gnarled and twisted and needle-less. As time passes, the farm is swallowed by the suburbs. The neighborhood kids dare one another to climb the scary, grumpy-looking tree, and soon, they are using its branches for their imaginative play, the tree serving as a pirate ship, a fort, a spaceship, and a dragon. But in winter, the tree stands alone and feels bereft and lonely for the first time ever, and it can’t look away from the decorated tree inside the house next to its lot. When some parents threaten to cut the “horrible” tree down, the tree thinks, “Not now that my limbs are full of happy children,” showing how far it has come. Happily for the tree, the children won’t give up so easily, and though the tree never wished to become a Christmas tree, it’s perfectly content being a “trick or tree.” Martinez’s digital illustrations play up the humorous dichotomy between the happy, aspiring Christmas trees (and their shoppers) and the grumpy tree, and the diverse humans are satisfyingly expressive.
Just the thing for anyone with a Grinch-y tree of their own in the yard. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Aug. 6, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4926-7335-4
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Sourcebooks Jabberwocky
Review Posted Online: July 13, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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