A light read for preteens that brims with possibility but leaves too many things vague.
In Courtney’s debut middle-grade book, an ordinary boy visits a wonderful world where international refugees live among the clouds.
Young Charlie is looking forward to the upcoming baseball season but wishes that his father had a little more time in his busy schedule to help him practice. The only odd thing in his life is his clairvoyant Aunt Matilda, who enigmatically predicts that he’ll turn blue—a statement too strange for him to understand or take seriously. During a cross-country flight to his Roseport, New York, home from his aunt’s house in Portland, Oregon, Charlie’s plane undergoes strange turbulence and he finds himself sucked out into the open air, where he lands in the mysterious Cloudscape. There, people from all over the world live in different cloud regions, using whatever supplies they can scavenge from passing airplanes—the very practice that accidentally pulled Charlie in. He begins to change in fascinating ways as he acclimates to his new surroundings, taking on a scaly, clammy, and, as Aunt Matilda predicted, blue appearance like other residents. They introduce him to such wonders as cloud-flavored snow cones and baseball played with golf balls (and no grounders). But despite these marvels, he still plans to do what Cloudonians say is impossible: return to the ground below. Courtney’s lighthearted adventure offers rudimentary atmospheric science bolstered by fantastical sensory flourishes. But although the book excels at tactile descriptions (such as stickiness), it leaves the visuals of Cloudscape, such as the Cloudonians’ travels, origins, and living conditions, mostly to readers’ imaginations, a choice that undercuts the otherwise competent worldbuilding. A late discovery by Charlie opens this burgeoning series up to new possibilities in planned future volumes. The book also includes a reading-group guide, a few black-and-white photos of clouds and rainbows, and a handful of recommendations for further reading about clouds.
A light read for preteens that brims with possibility but leaves too many things vague.Pub Date: Feb. 22, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-9967059-1-2
Page Count: 142
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: June 2, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The seemingly ageless Seeger brings back his renowned giant for another go in a tuneful tale that, like the art, is a bit sketchy, but chockful of worthy messages. Faced with yearly floods and droughts since they’ve cut down all their trees, the townsfolk decide to build a dam—but the project is stymied by a boulder that is too huge to move. Call on Abiyoyo, suggests the granddaughter of the man with the magic wand, then just “Zoop Zoop” him away again. But the rock that Abiyoyo obligingly flings aside smashes the wand. How to avoid Abiyoyo’s destruction now? Sing the monster to sleep, then make it a peaceful, tree-planting member of the community, of course. Seeger sums it up in a postscript: “every community must learn to manage its giants.” Hays, who illustrated the original (1986), creates colorful, if unfinished-looking, scenes featuring a notably multicultural human cast and a towering Cubist fantasy of a giant. The song, based on a Xhosa lullaby, still has that hard-to-resist sing-along potential, and the themes of waging peace, collective action, and the benefits of sound ecological practices are presented in ways that children will both appreciate and enjoy. (Picture book. 5-9)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-689-83271-0
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2001
Not for the faint-hearted—who are mostly adults anyway—but for stouthearted kids who love a brush with the sinister:...
A magnificently creepy fantasy pits a bright, bored little girl against a soul-eating horror that inhabits the reality right next door.
Coraline’s parents are loving, but really too busy to play with her, so she amuses herself by exploring her family’s new flat. A drawing-room door that opens onto a brick wall becomes a natural magnet for the curious little girl, and she is only half-surprised when, one day, the door opens onto a hallway and Coraline finds herself in a skewed mirror of her own flat, complete with skewed, button-eyed versions of her own parents. This is Gaiman’s (American Gods, 2001, etc.) first novel for children, and the author of the Sandman graphic novels here shows a sure sense of a child’s fears—and the child’s ability to overcome those fears. “I will be brave,” thinks Coraline. “No, I am brave.” When Coraline realizes that her other mother has not only stolen her real parents but has also stolen the souls of other children before her, she resolves to free her parents and to find the lost souls by matching her wits against the not-mother. The narrative hews closely to a child’s-eye perspective: Coraline never really tries to understand what has happened or to fathom the nature of the other mother; she simply focuses on getting her parents back and thwarting the other mother for good. Her ability to accept and cope with the surreality of the other flat springs from the child’s ability to accept, without question, the eccentricity and arbitrariness of her own—and every child’s own—reality. As Coraline’s quest picks up its pace, the parallel world she finds herself trapped in grows ever more monstrous, generating some deliciously eerie descriptive writing.
Not for the faint-hearted—who are mostly adults anyway—but for stouthearted kids who love a brush with the sinister: Coraline is spot on. (Fiction. 9-12)Pub Date: July 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-380-97778-8
Page Count: 176
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2002
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