Offbeat and upbeat.
A road trip with two quirky cousins helps a boy understand his father, a troubled veteran.
Summer sees 11-year-old June set off to travel around the country with Larry and Cornell, his adult first cousins once removed. June, short for Henry Junior, lives in Sheboygan Falls, Wisconsin, with his Mama. Daddy, who drinks and suffers from PTSD, served in Iraq and Afghanistan and has left home. Larry and Cornell spend their summers driving a truck around the U.S. to restore old Fords—and only Fords. They are 100% Ford men who take good care of June and share their passion for and devotion to vintage models. While working on the cars, they also interact with the owners, learning about their stories and offering them as much attention as they lavish on the autos. June gradually learns the business and about his family. He is, after all, named for Henry Ford (whose biased views are named). June gets life lessons in forgiveness and gains a better understanding of his father’s problems. As they motor through Illinois, Tennessee, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Mississippi, and Louisiana, among other places, June not only learns about oil filters, but also listens to the owners’ treasured and sometimes painful memories. Along the way he even makes a friend. Car fanciers will relish the details while the family issues will resonate with many readers. Main characters read as White.
Offbeat and upbeat. (author's note) (Fiction. 10-12)Pub Date: May 11, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-374-31405-7
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: March 12, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
Neither George’s experiences nor the author’s pedagogical additions offer much to engage readers’ hearts or minds.
Faint echoes of the middle volumes of the Little House series are all that animate this bland, Depression-era epistolary tale.
Apps opens with a superfluous introduction to his fictional family and their historical background and closes with two pages of letter-writing exercises. In between, he records five months of life on a Wisconsin farm. Although the family’s removal to the farm is triggered by the loss of the father’s factory job, hardship seems very far-off. During the period covered by the book, the weather is idyllic, money never seems tight (along with horses and heavy equipment, George’s father buys both a puppy, shipped in from a distant locale, and a retired circus pony), and not even the death of a cow or the dumping of a load of seed oats in a ditch results in any sort of setback. All is told via the correspondence between 12- (later 13-) year-old George Struckmeyer and his grandmother back in Cleveland. Grandma responds with eye-glazing platitudes (“What a Fourth of July celebration! Picnics are fun, aren’t they? And having one near a lake makes it even more fun”) to George’s long, polished accounts. He tells of social events, baseball games, getting the hay in, feeding a passing hobo and putting on an amateur circus in the barn, among other small adventures.
Neither George’s experiences nor the author’s pedagogical additions offer much to engage readers’ hearts or minds. (Historical fiction. 10-12)Pub Date: April 16, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-55591-998-6
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Fulcrum
Review Posted Online: Feb. 17, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2013
Facile, but well-stocked with tiny people, odd little twists and narrow squeaks.
A foundling with anger issues takes on a sentient island with the same problem in this loosely linked sequel to The Secret Room (2012).
Certain that he’ll never be adopted like his friend Achim from the previous volume, 12-year-old Karl sneaks away from the orphanage with only a toothbrush and a toy boat for baggage. The latter immediately comes in handy, as Karl runs into a crew of thumb-sized sea nomads who have lost their ship and are eager to return to a certain strange island (which they dub a “continent”) where their children disappeared. Thanks to a magic biscuit, Karl shrinks down to join them and after a short voyage, finds himself on that island. It turns out to be governed by a mysterious Ancient One prone to rages that cause violent storms and earthquakes. Nursing deep feelings of abandonment that tend to express themselves in furious outbursts, Karl can relate. Spinning her tale around sympathetic characters rather than a plausible storyline, Michaelis equips her mercurial protagonist with lots of thoroughly convenient magical and full-size human help. He ultimately finds not only the children (who have been transformed into trees), but also tidy cures for both his anger and the Ancient One’s. In frequent vignettes, Nievelstein focuses on objects and setting rather than cast members.
Facile, but well-stocked with tiny people, odd little twists and narrow squeaks. (Fantasy. 10-12)Pub Date: June 1, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-62087-539-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Sky Pony Press
Review Posted Online: March 26, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2013
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