A work of juvenile fiction with heavy-handed messaging that’s mitigated by intriguing artwork and imaginative modern and...
In this children’s fantasy by author/illustrators de Bruin (Losing David, 2018, etc.) and Decker, an arrogant cat goes on a journey of self-discovery, hoping to regain her lost nine lives.
Feline narrator Rosebud is a reckless bully who’s used up all of her lives by her second birthday. Her only hope is to seek out the Cat Lady Goddess and ask that they be restored. The Goddess agrees to do so only if Rosebud finds and recovers some precious treasures that were stolen by the Supreme Golden Cobra Empress. This means a trip to an action-packed “Otherworld.” With a benign, winged dog as her guide, Rosebud, her sisters, and brother embark on a perilous odyssey, variously threatened and befriended by the authors’ unusual pantheon of strange beings—among them, a giant, fire-spouting, prayer-offering mantis; and a tusked ogre with a sentient rowboat. Along the way, Rosebud (and readers) receives didactic character-building lessons: An ugly toad is poisoning the Otherworld with his Rumor Mill, churning out and posting gossip; a kindly Bigfoot-type character points out that the world would be boring if everyone was alike (“we’ve been given the perfect bodies to suit who we are and what we need”); Rosebud discovers she can feel empathy and love and learns not to “judge someone…because they remind you of someone who did something bad to you.” Rosebud’s redemptive enlightenment isn’t handled with a great deal of subtlety. However, the authors do couch their lessons in an absorbing, vivid framework of mythological elements, illustrated with full-page collage art that offers a striking mix of realistic and fantasy imagery. It’s worth noting, however, that the mild English expletive “bloody” is used frequently, and the troublemaking toad describes a snake princess and her sisters as dressing like “street walkers,” without elaboration.
A work of juvenile fiction with heavy-handed messaging that’s mitigated by intriguing artwork and imaginative modern and mythological elements.Pub Date: April 23, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-9994664-1-4
Page Count: 140
Publisher: Mediacs
Review Posted Online: July 9, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
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