The author of Rachel Chance (1990) spins another likable melodrama about children with a precarious hold on their only home. For narrator Mary Jack, Father Matt is better than most in a long series of foster parents, though the kind Episcopal priest has a shrewish wife (Jill), and Mary Jack is stuck with most of the housework—as well as with caring for ``Jane,'' an abandoned waif who never speaks and bears terrible scars from abuse. To this uneasy mÇnage come Adam, 14, a taciturn rebel whose mother abandoned him, and Father Matt's sister Cecile, newly widowed after an auto accident that has also disabled one arm and left her aphasic. It's too much for Jill: as a stopgap, the three kids and Cecile are sent, under the nominal care of mean, indolent Gerry, to a riverside summer home Cecile has inherited, for a few weeks that extend into the whole summer. Gerry absconds with the cash; fearing they'll be split up and sent somewhere worse, the others muddle valiantly along until they end, predictably, by forming a viable new family. Cecile's recovery is uneven, but she gradually assumes a motherly role; Mary Jack learns to demand help and accept her own vulnerability; Adam proves loyal and resourceful; Jane warms to affection and finally reveals her real name. Meanwhile, a thoroughly nice high-school classmate of Cecile's turns out to be a neighbor, and a nearby camper provides some suspenseful menace. An old-fashioned fantasy, really: contrived, but genial, well-told, and engrossing. (Fiction. 10- 14)
Pub Date: April 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-395-59507-X
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1992
Evocations of Narnia are not enough to salvage this fantasy, which struggles with thin character development.
A portal fantasy survivor story from an established devotional writer.
Fourteen-year-old Eva’s maternal grandmother lives on a grand estate in England; Eva and her academic parents live in New Haven, Connecticut. When she and Mum finally visit Carrick Hall, Eva is alternately resentful at what she’s missed and overjoyed to connect with sometimes aloof Grandmother. Alongside questions of Eva’s family history, the summer is permeated by a greater mystery surrounding the work of fictional children’s fantasy writer A.H.W. Clifton, who wrote a Narnialike series that Eva adores. As it happens, Grandmother was one of several children who entered and ruled Ternival, the world of Clifton’s books; the others perished in 1952, and Grandmother hasn’t recovered. The Narnia influences are strong—Eva’s grandmother is the Susan figure who’s repudiated both magic and God—and the ensuing trauma has created rifts that echo through her relationships with her daughter and granddaughter. An early narrative implication that Eva will visit Ternival to set things right barely materializes in this series opener; meanwhile, the religious parable overwhelms the magic elements as the story winds on. The serviceable plot is weakened by shallow characterization. Little backstory appears other than that which immediately concerns the plot, and Eva tends to respond emotionally as the story requires—resentful when her seething silence is required, immediately trusting toward characters readers need to trust. Major characters are cued white.
Evocations of Narnia are not enough to salvage this fantasy, which struggles with thin character development. (author’s note, map, author Q&A) (Religious fantasy. 12-14)Pub Date: Jan. 30, 2024
ISBN: 9780593194454
Page Count: 384
Publisher: WaterBrook
Review Posted Online: Oct. 21, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2023
A satisfying story of family, friendship and small-town cooperation in a 21st-century world.
Sent to stay with octogenarian relatives for the summer, 14-year-old Mike ends up coordinating a community drive to raise $40,000 for the adoption of a Romanian orphan. He’ll never be his dad's kind of engineer, but he learns he’s great at human engineering.
Mike’s math learning disability is matched by his widower father's lack of social competence; the Giant Genius can’t even reliably remember his son’s name. Like many of the folks the boy comes to know in Do Over, Penn.—his great-uncle Poppy silent in his chair, the multiply pierced-and-tattooed Gladys from the bank and “a homeless guy” who calls himself Past—Mike feels like a failure. But in spite of his own lack of confidence, he provides the kick start they need to cope with their losses and contribute to the campaign. Using the Internet (especially YouTube), Mike makes use of town talents and his own webpage design skills and entrepreneurial imagination. Math-definition chapter headings (Compatible Numbers, Zero Property, Tessellations) turn out to apply well to human actions in this well-paced, first-person narrative. Erskine described Asperger’s syndrome from the inside in Mockingbird (2010). Here, it’s a likely cause for the rift between father and son touchingly mended at the novel's cinematic conclusion.
A satisfying story of family, friendship and small-town cooperation in a 21st-century world. (Fiction. 10-14)Pub Date: June 9, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-399-25505-2
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Philomel
Review Posted Online: April 18, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2011
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