It takes the naïveté of a nine-year-old girl to light the wick of a chain of events that will affect racial bias in a small southern community. The term racial equality isn’t in Darby’s vocabulary, but in her daily life she’s certainly aware of the differences between herself and Evette, her best friend, whose father is one of the tenant farmers for Darby’s father. The girls go to separate schools; Evette has shabby clothes, lives in a tumbledown cabin, and is dirt poor. In 1926 in South Carolina, it’s a way of life. It’s Evette who excites Darby about becoming a newspaper girl when she tells her about her aunt who lives in New York City and writes for a newspaper. Mr. Salter at the newspaper likes Darby’s first essay on why toads are safe and her next, about her blind Great Uncle Harvey. That’s before a young black boy is beaten to death for trying to steal a chicken. When Mr. Salter decides to publish Darby’s article on racial injustice, he calls it “a lesson in humanity from the mouth of a child.” But her “lesson” begins an upheaval in the county that incites the Ku Klux Klan, cross-burning, and violence. It’s Darby’s voice that makes this story memorable, both the Southern colloquial cadence and expressions of innocent observations, e.g., Darby wanted to “take an eraser and rub the KKK out of my head like lines of chalk on a blackboard.” The root of this work stems from a series of oral history interviews the author conducted—and that’s what makes it ring with truth. Darby symbolizes how one person, even a child, can make a difference. (Historical fiction. 10-13)
Pub Date: April 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-7636-1417-3
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2002
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A world-class charmer, Clements (The Janitor’s Boy, 2000, etc.) woos aspiring young authors—as well as grown up publishers, editors, agents, parents, teachers, and even reviewers—with this tongue-in-cheek tale of a 12-year-old novelist’s triumphant debut. Sparked by a chance comment of her mother’s, a harried assistant editor for a (surely fictional) children’s imprint, Natalie draws on deep reserves of feeling and writing talent to create a moving story about a troubled schoolgirl and her father. First, it moves her pushy friend Zoe, who decides that it has to be published; then it moves a timorous, second-year English teacher into helping Zoe set up a virtual literary agency; then, submitted pseudonymously, it moves Natalie’s unsuspecting mother into peddling it to her waspish editor-in-chief. Depicting the world of children’s publishing as a delicious mix of idealism and office politics, Clements squires the manuscript past slush pile and contract, the editing process, and initial buzz (“The Cheater grabs hold of your heart and never lets go,” gushes Kirkus). Finally, in a tearful, joyous scene—carefully staged by Zoe, who turns out to be perfect agent material: cunning, loyal, devious, manipulative, utterly shameless—at the publication party, Natalie’s identity is revealed as news cameras roll. Selznick’s gnomic, realistic portraits at once reflect the tale’s droll undertone and deftly capture each character’s distinct personality. Terrific for flourishing school writing projects, this is practical as well as poignant. Indeed, it “grabs hold of yourheart and never lets go.” (Fiction. 10-12)
Pub Date: June 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-689-82594-3
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2001
A child finds that being alone in a tiny tropical paradise has its ups and downs in this appealingly offbeat tale from the Australian author of Peeling the Onion (1999). Though her mother is long dead and her scientist father Jack has just sailed off on a quick expedition to gather plankton, Nim is anything but lonely on her small island home. Not only does she have constant companions in Selkie, a sea lion, and a marine iguana named Fred, but Chica, a green turtle, has just arrived for an annual egg-laying—and, through the solar-powered laptop, she has even made a new e-mail friend in famed adventure novelist Alex Rover. Then a string of mishaps darkens Nim’s sunny skies: her father loses rudder and dish antenna in a storm; a tourist ship that was involved in her mother’s death appears off the island’s reefs; and, running down a volcanic slope, Nim takes a nasty spill that leaves her feverish, with an infected knee. Though she lives halfway around the world and is in reality a decidedly unadventurous urbanite, Alex, short for “Alexandra,” sets off to the rescue, arriving in the midst of another storm that requires Nim and companions to rescue her. Once Jack brings his battered boat limping home, the stage is set for sunny days again. Plenty of comic, freely-sketched line drawings help to keep the tone light, and Nim, with her unusual associates and just-right mix of self-reliance and vulnerability, makes a character young readers won’t soon tire of. (Fiction. 10-12)
Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-375-81123-0
Page Count: 144
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2000
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