“The salmon fry swirled and splashed as they scattered, / ‘Spawn and die, spawn and die, spawn and die’ they all chattered.”
Lest children imagine that life is fair or safe, James offers a brutally naturalistic view of a salmon’s abruptly truncated journey. Separated from his best friend Jenny, Sukai leaves the ocean when his time comes to travel upriver and die with his fellow salmon. Unexpectedly catching her scent in the water, he “splashed with his tail excited to spawn, / But Jenny’s body was rotten and her eyes, they were gone.” Sukai achieves his apotheosis, but not in the way he intends: Before he can “sow his seed,” he is snatched by a bear, who takes a bite and leaves his corpse on the riverbank where “[t]housands of insects gathered and ate. / Transferring nutrients, minerals and valuable nitrates.” Featuring writhing maggots, blinking eyes and other small animations, plus occasional touch-activated nature sounds, the Canadian artist’s disorienting but distinctive illustrations place figures rendered in highly stylized Northwest Coast motifs into realistically painted outdoor settings. Readers disquieted by his lurid, ham-fisted verse and sometimes-disturbing pictures will find several blander mazes and coloring pages accessible through a link on every screen. Makes Arlene Sardine look like My Little Pony. (iPad storybook app. 9-11)
Pub Date: Aug. 30, 2012
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Jeffrey James
Review Posted Online: Oct. 3, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2012
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Renowned Latin American writer Alvarez has created another story about cultural identity, but this time the primary character is 11-year-old Miguel Guzmán.
When Tía Lola arrives to help the family, Miguel and his hermana, Juanita, have just moved from New York City to Vermont with their recently divorced mother. The last thing Miguel wants, as he's trying to fit into a predominantly white community, is a flamboyant aunt who doesn't speak a word of English. Tía Lola, however, knows a language that defies words; she quickly charms and befriends all the neighbors. She can also cook exotic food, dance (anywhere, anytime), plan fun parties, and tell enchanting stories. Eventually, Tía Lola and the children swap English and Spanish ejercicios, but the true lesson is "mutual understanding." Peppered with Spanish words and phrases, Alvarez makes the reader as much a part of the "language" lessons as the characters. This story seamlessly weaves two culturaswhile letting each remain intact, just as Miguel is learning to do with his own life. Like all good stories, this one incorporates a lesson just subtle enough that readers will forget they're being taught, but in the end will understand themselves, and others, a little better, regardless of la lengua nativa—the mother tongue.
Simple, bella, un regalo permenente: simple and beautiful, a gift that will stay. (Fiction. 9-11)Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-375-80215-0
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
Categories: CHILDREN'S GENERAL CHILDREN'S
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BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
At a time when death has become an acceptable, even voguish subject in children's fiction, Natalie Babbitt comes through with a stylistic gem about living forever.
Protected Winnie, the ten-year-old heroine, is not immortal, but when she comes upon young Jesse Tuck drinking from a secret spring in her parents' woods, she finds herself involved with a family who, having innocently drunk the same water some 87 years earlier, haven't aged a moment since. Though the mood is delicate, there is no lack of action, with the Tucks (previously suspected of witchcraft) now pursued for kidnapping Winnie; Mae Tuck, the middle aged mother, striking and killing a stranger who is onto their secret and would sell the water; and Winnie taking Mae's place in prison so that the Tucks can get away before she is hanged from the neck until....? Though Babbitt makes the family a sad one, most of their reasons for discontent are circumstantial and there isn't a great deal of wisdom to be gleaned from their fate or Winnie's decision not to share it.
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1975
ISBN: 0312369816
Page Count: 164
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: April 13, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1975
Categories: CHILDREN'S SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY | CHILDREN'S SOCIAL THEMES
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