Jacobson (Moon Sandwich Mom, 1999, etc.) does a skillful job of showing the heart-wrenching emotions felt by a child left behind by unfeeling friends in this easy novel for girls interested in ballet. Winnie, Zoe, and Vanessa have managed to be best buddies without bickering since kindergarten, but things change in third grade when Zoe and Vanessa want to take ballet lessons, and Winnie doesn’t. She goes to class with her friends, but becomes the “odd man out” of the trio because she doesn’t enjoy ballet, although she improves in her dancing with her dad’s gentle coaching. Winnie is also different because she lives with her widowed father, who doesn’t always get the details of ballet wear and sleepovers quite right. The once-a-week ballet class the girls attend actually proceeds far more quickly than a real ballet class for the sake of advancing the plot, but girls who are enrolled in class themselves (or wish they were) will enjoy the authentic details of ballet positions and movements. Several lists and letters in different typefaces are integrated into the story, which works along with the large type size and Geis’s charming line illustrations to create an accessible format for girls just making the transition into longer stories with chapters and more complex plots. (Fiction. 7-9)
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-618-13287-2
Page Count: 96
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2001
A family gathers to remember one of their own: a brother, an uncle, a mate, a son. Uncle Ron has died of AIDS (obviously, though it is never spelled out), and his mother, brother and sister-in-law, niece and nephew, and companion are sewing a panel for the great national memorial quilt. Lauren, the niece, narrates as the assembled recall Ron fondly while they pick and choose various items to sew on the panel. The sting of his death is particularly acute for Lauren; her uncle treated her as an adult, but knew how to throw his great protective arms around her—he was her teacher and her friend. Heartache a mile wide runs through this story, named in Lauren, hinted at in the brother, forceful in an old companion, and most apparent in Lauren’s grandmother, with clues that she will have to suffer alone (“Grandpa hadn’t come after Uncle Ron’s memorial service either,” and “ ‘Grandpa says he doesn’t know how to sew,’ “). The ending—the somber mood dissolves as everyone dances—feels contrived, but that doesn’t negate the value of this book, which allows readers to explore, as they so choose or not, related issues. In his first picture book, Hills’s soft-focus artwork serves mostly as a buffer to all the sharp emotions of the text. (Picture book. 7-9)
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-689-81592-1
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Atheneum
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 1998
Continuing in the lapidary visual style that made hits of Stellaluna (1993) and Verdi (1997), Cannon illustrates this tale of a hard-luck jungle cockroach with exquisitely detailed and realistic ground-level views that seem to glow from within. Crickwing, so dubbed after a near-fatal encounter with a toad, likes to play with his food, constructing faces or whole animals, and becoming so absorbed that all too often some predator arrives before he can chow down. Finally he begins taking out his annoyance by bullying a column of smaller leaf-cutter ants—whereupon the leaf-cutter queen orders him seized and left as a sacrifice to the army ants. Saved from certain destruction by two kind-hearted leaf-cutter workers, Crickwing repays them by designing a giant anteater made from vegetation. Its appearance causes the army ants to flee in panic. Though Cannon’s art is far different in technique from James Marshall’s, there is a certain similarity in the way both can pack worlds of expression into eyes that are little more than dots. The insects here may be more or less accurately drawn, but they all have distinct personalities too, and their faces (as well as the occasional drawing of bugs strutting or madly fleeing) will have children laughing in all the right places. Moreover, his wing healed by the end, Crickwing is not only a hero, but an elegant, graceful beauty as well. Readers may not lose their aversion to cockroaches, even with the author’s informative, appreciative closing notes, but they’ll enjoy the adventure. (Picture book. 7-9)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-15-201790-9
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2000
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