Resembling a Frank Capra or Preston Sturges movie in plot and tone, this fabulistic story from Ferris has an unconventional style and offbeat sense of humor that will delight readers or exhaust them, depending on their tolerance for screwball comedies. Wealthy Horatio Alger Huntington-Ackerman’s two money-hungry brothers poison his birthday cake, with the intention of wiping out his entire family so they can inherit the riches. Instead, Horatio, wife Mousey, the butler Bentley’s wife, Flossie, and a pet chicken end up in comas. Horatio’s son Sandy and Bentley set out to nail the evil duo, and to revive their loved ones; the plot thickens when Sandy meets Sunny, a chatty nurse and love-interest, and they interact with his neighbors—the “inmates” of Walnut Manor, a home for the “distressed.” A financial subplot and a muddle of characters, defined by their eccentricities, clog the pacing of this throwback, but when the various subplots converge and the happy endings commence, the wrap-up is resounding. (Fiction. 12-14)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-15-201590-6
Page Count: 228
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1998
PLB 0-679-99030-5 Bodett (for adults, The Free Fall of Webster Cummings, 1996, etc.) tacks toward a younger audience with this tale of two siblings who prove they’re not ready to be on their own. With her fisherman father gone for yet another long stretch, September, and her brother, Ivan, keep up with chores and school lessons in their isolated Alaska cabin; then Ivan attempts to jury-rig a power connection for his video game, and shorts out both radios. Despite their father’s express prohibition, the two boat for town, 14 miles across the bay, to get the radios fixed. That first trip becomes a series after September and Ivan discover that the pleasures of the local french fries, chocolate shakes, and human contact outweigh the guilt of breaking promises. Ensuing complications and several poor decisions ultimately put them out in the bay when a “williwaw,” a sudden storm, howls in. It’s a wild, exciting climax, but the author reaches it only after a leisurely exploration of the push-pull relationship between two lonely children on the edge of adolescence. Reader-interest in these capable but not yet self-reliant characters may flicker in the face of Bodett’s overwritten prose and his tendency to harp on certain themes, such as Ivan’s video game addiction. Still, with the thrilling finish and singular setting, this is a promising effort. (Fiction. 11-13)
Pub Date: March 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-679-89030-0
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1999
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Krisher’s mesmerizing read takes place from the summer of 1837 to the fall of 1838 in Millbrook, Massachusetts. A chorus of voices narrates (a chart/genealogy at the front helps keep the many townsfolk straight) as the point of view shifts. Even in a small town, there’s much diversity: the childless Jacob and Hetty White are Quakers; John Common is a Methodist minister though his angry father-in-law Calvin is a Congregationalist; the black freedman Rufus Thomas makes his way by doing what needs done. The Faith of the title is an angry and spirited girl who doesn’t understand why book-learning is denied her but urged upon her brothers. A cast of drunken husbands and wise or foolish or compassionate older women round out a tale that opens with a tragic barn fire and closes with the origins of Mount Holyoke and the hidden courage of the Underground Railroad. (Fiction. 12-14)
Pub Date: Oct. 15, 2003
ISBN: 0-8234-1791-3
Page Count: 263
Publisher: Holiday House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2003
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