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
“Hear, and listen well, my friends, and I will tell you a tale that has been told for a thousand years and more.” It’s not exactly a rarely told tale, either, though this complete rendition is distinguished by both handsome packaging and a prose narrative that artfully mixes alliterative language reminiscent of the original, with currently topical references to, for instance, Grendel’s “endless terror raids,” and the “holocaust at Heorot.” Along with being printed on heavy stock and surrounded by braided borders, the text is paired to colorful scenes featuring a small human warrior squaring off with a succession of grimacing but not very frightening monsters in battles marked by but a few discreet splashes of blood. Morpurgo puts his finger on the story’s enduring appeal—“we still fear the evil that stalks out there in the darkness . . . ”—but offers a version unlikely to trouble the sleep of more sensitive readers or listeners. (Fiction. 10-12)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-7636-3206-6
Page Count: 96
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2006
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