A simple yet potent message from a child who’s a sometimes-bland messenger.
A hospital-bound child offers messages of hope in a Christian novel by debut author Smith.
Kipper is about 6 years old and has never known life outside of a hospital. When that young narrator first appears in this inspirational novel, he is in the intensive care unit, and his future on Earth is anything but certain. Yet Kipper is not one to fret. He has a penchant for drawing (his artwork appears throughout the book), a love of clouds, and, after a chance encounter with a young Chinese girl, a personal relationship with Jesus. Kipper’s body may not have much mobility, but his mind is free to roam. And roam it does over topics like the beauty of nature, the free will of humans, and the importance of trusting completely in God. Even as Kipper becomes weaker physically, his spiritual self grows. He learns not to worry, and he encourages readers to do the same with statements such as, “Everything, good and bad, happens for a reason, beyond our own understanding through life.” Kipper’s spiritual progress, though largely predictable, provides a force for reflection. If someone with so little, whose entire life has been so confined, can find so much reason to rejoice, why can’t everyone else? Certain parts of this tale lack much in the way of substance, however. A toy sailboat race has him describing every sailboat and its construction. Kipper also describes every child who participates in the race. This information is no more enticing or motivational than it sounds. Nor is the event made more exciting by the reader’s being told: “It was so exciting to watch, as this race unfolded!” In the end, though, Kipper’s lesson is as lasting as his circumstances are difficult, and some readers might learn much from a boy on the brink of death who finds no reason to give in to despair.
A simple yet potent message from a child who’s a sometimes-bland messenger.Pub Date: Nov. 25, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-72833-406-6
Page Count: 288
Publisher: AuthorHouse
Review Posted Online: March 19, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
These letters from some important executive Down Below, to one of the junior devils here on earth, whose job is to corrupt mortals, are witty and written in a breezy style seldom found in religious literature. The author quotes Luther, who said: "The best way to drive out the devil, if he will not yield to texts of Scripture, is to jeer and flout him, for he cannot bear scorn." This the author does most successfully, for by presenting some of our modern and not-so-modern beliefs as emanating from the devil's headquarters, he succeeds in making his reader feel like an ass for ever having believed in such ideas. This kind of presentation gives the author a tremendous advantage over the reader, however, for the more timid reader may feel a sense of guilt after putting down this book. It is a clever book, and for the clever reader, rather than the too-earnest soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1942
ISBN: 0060652934
Page Count: 53
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 17, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1943
A charming and incisive debut.
Four young nuns wind up running a halfway house full of quirky characters in Woonsocket, Rhode Island.
Four Catholic sisters live with the elderly Sister Roberta in upstate New York. All on the edge of turning 30, the young women are at loose ends: Their day care is shuttered, and Sister Roberta is retiring. However, the four women refuse to be parted: “We were fixed to one another, like parts of some strange, asymmetrical body: Frances was the mouth; Mary Lucille, the heart; Therese, the legs. And I, Agatha, the eyes.” Eventually, the Buffalo diocese decides to transfer them to Rhode Island, where they are put in charge of running Little Neon, a “Mountain Dew”–colored house for residents trying to get sober and get back on their feet. When the local Catholic high school needs someone to teach geometry, the sisters volunteer Agatha, who is labelled as the quietest but the smartest of the quartet. As Agatha immerses herself in her new life, she finds the residents of Little Neon, from parolee Baby to Tim Gary, whose disfigured jaw prevents him from finding love, open her eyes to new realities, as do her colleagues and students at the high school. Eventually, Agatha can no longer ignore that the church, and most of all she herself, is changing. Luchette’s novel, her first, is structured in small chapters that feel like vignettes from a slightly wacky indie film. The book is frequently vibrant with resonant images: Agatha learning to roller skate in Little Neon’s driveway or a resident drunk in a sequined dress riding a lawnmower through the snow. But even though the book feels light, Luchette does not turn away from the responsibility of examining the darkness undergirding the institution of the Catholic Church.
A charming and incisive debut.Pub Date: Aug. 3, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-374-26526-7
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 18, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2021
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