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
Six years after she was scarred in a brutal attack—sanctioned by the elders of her Pakistani village as punishment in an interfamily dispute—Nadira, 18, labors as a domestic servant in Karachi, supporting her widowed mother and little brother, Umar. (The cover photo of a demure, beautifully groomed teen seems to belong to a different story.) When Umar is kidnapped, sold as a child jockey to race camels for wealthy sheikhs, Nadira vows to rescue him and, disguised as a boy, becomes a jockey herself. Slow to start, the story takes off when the action shifts to the jockey training camps but is hampered by its awkward epistolary format, which distances readers from the action and drains the narrative of suspense. Nadira is the most fleshed-out character, yet much about her remains a mystery: What is her religion? Why is the Persian A Thousand and One Nights her primary cultural referent? In a story billed as fact-based, important details are omitted: How does the trafficking system work? Who owns the jockeys? Are the camps and race tracks in or outside Pakistan? No glossary or extra-narrative explanation is provided. And although the subject matter is geared to young adults, the elementary vocabulary and simple syntax appear designed for younger readers. A well-intentioned but flawed execution of a fascinating story. (Fiction. 12-14)
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2007
ISBN: 1-4169-1767-5
Page Count: 192
Publisher: McElderry
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2007
Thirteen-year-old Ruby Parker wants everything in her life to stay the same. But life refuses to cooperate, giving her gigantic breasts one day and divorcing parents the next. Still, what makes Coleman’s realistic heroine unusual is that she’s actually a famous actress who plays an ordinary girl on TV. Fans write seeking advice from her character, who always seems to know what to do. But Ruby isn’t the girl she plays on television; that girl has a script. As Ruby, a regular girl with genuine problems, struggles to gain control over her unwieldy life at home, in school and on the set, she learns that she too shouldn’t make unfounded assumptions about other people. Although some of the comedy is embarrassing enough to make the reader cringe, Coleman is both witty and insightful, and she makes her points clearly without being didactic. At the end of the tale, Ruby comes to accept the changes that life brings, even deciding to make a few alterations of her own. (Fiction. 12-14)
Pub Date: March 1, 2007
ISBN: 0-06-077628-5
Page Count: 240
Publisher: HarperTempest
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2007
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