Iggie's cosmopolitan family is off to Tokyo and Winnie knew they'd sell to someone interesting—but her welcome to the Negro Garbers ('Detroit! Did you riot?') doesn't warm them and her championship of their cause isn't backed up by her parents: she's the bumbling, besieged liberal at age eleven. But not a girl to give up easily: to the kids at the playground she introduces the Garbers as Africans, to younger Tina Garber she insists that, sure there are black kids around—"just not today." Winnie's always hated "Little Miss Germ-Head" Clarice Landon and her busybody mother so it's no surprise that the latter circulates a petition advising the Garbers to move; what shocks Winnie is that her parents don't tell Mrs. Landon off. Her embarrassment with the Garbers—Herbie runs to hostile sarcasm, Glenn to constraint—is mitigated when the talk gets around to parents: both sets seem bent on "'protect(ing) the children from everything bad in the world.' Just close your eyes and it will go away." The kids' candor proves to be the nearest thing to a triumph on Grove Street: integration, such as it is, is a by-product of Mr. Garber's determination not to forsake a good job, the extremist Landons' departure, and the apathy of Winnie's parents—"Moving is just too much trouble." Occasionally forced (Mrs. Landon's crude tactics, Clarice's very name), loose though not slack—in fact evanescent except for the rueful truth.
Pub Date: April 13, 1970
ISBN: 0440440629
Page Count: 129
Publisher: Bradbury
Review Posted Online: Oct. 15, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1970
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Good Guys and Bad get just deserts in the end, and Stanley gets plenty of opportunities to display pluck and valor in this...
Sentenced to a brutal juvenile detention camp for a crime he didn't commit, a wimpy teenager turns four generations of bad family luck around in this sunburnt tale of courage, obsession, and buried treasure from Sachar (Wayside School Gets a Little Stranger, 1995, etc.).
Driven mad by the murder of her black beau, a schoolteacher turns on the once-friendly, verdant town of Green Lake, Texas, becomes feared bandit Kissin' Kate Barlow, and dies, laughing, without revealing where she buried her stash. A century of rainless years later, lake and town are memories—but, with the involuntary help of gangs of juvenile offenders, the last descendant of the last residents is still digging. Enter Stanley Yelnats IV, great-grandson of one of Kissin' Kate's victims and the latest to fall to the family curse of being in the wrong place at the wrong time; under the direction of The Warden, a woman with rattlesnake venom polish on her long nails, Stanley and each of his fellow inmates dig a hole a day in the rock-hard lake bed. Weeks of punishing labor later, Stanley digs up a clue, but is canny enough to conceal the information of which hole it came from. Through flashbacks, Sachar weaves a complex net of hidden relationships and well-timed revelations as he puts his slightly larger-than-life characters under a sun so punishing that readers will be reaching for water bottles.
Good Guys and Bad get just deserts in the end, and Stanley gets plenty of opportunities to display pluck and valor in this rugged, engrossing adventure. (Fiction. 9-13)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998
ISBN: 978-0-374-33265-5
Page Count: 233
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2000
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Wonderful, indeed
A love song to baby with delightful illustrations to boot.
Sweet but not saccharine and singsong but not forced, Martin’s text is one that will invite rereadings as it affirms parental wishes for children while admirably keeping child readers at its heart. The lines that read “This is the first time / There’s ever been you, / So I wonder what wonderful things / You will do” capture the essence of the picture book and are accompanied by a diverse group of babies and toddlers clad in downright adorable outfits. Other spreads include older kids, too, and pictures expand on the open text to visually interpret the myriad possibilities and hopes for the depicted children. For example, a spread reading “Will you learn how to fly / To find the best view?” shows a bespectacled, school-aged girl on a swing soaring through an empty white background. This is just one spread in which Martin’s fearless embrace of the white of the page serves her well. Throughout the book, she maintains a keen balance of layout choices, and surprising details—zebras on the wallpaper behind a father cradling his child, a rock-’n’-roll band of mice paralleling the children’s own band called “The Missing Teeth”—add visual interest and gentle humor. An ideal title for the baby-shower gift bag and for any nursery bookshelf or lap-sit storytime.
Wonderful, indeed . (Picture book. 1-4)Pub Date: Aug. 25, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-37671-6
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: June 5, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2015
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