A horror novelist for adults (Extremities, 1998, etc.) tries a different tack with this whiny but intense girl-meets-dog (and boy) story. Volunteering at an animal shelter, prickly loner Rachel finds a kindred spirit in the newly arrived, savagely feral dog she dubs “Grrl.” A compulsive writer, Rachel is inspired to work on a nightmarish, dog’s-eye view of street life that her creative-writing teacher urges her to finish and submit to a competition; meanwhile, Rachel is making another connection, this time with Griffin, a withdrawn new classmate. After some wary circling, Griffin offers his backyard as a pen for Grrl—but Rachel returns to the shelter to discover that Grrl’s already been euthanized. Though she tends toward trite self-analysis (“What do you do when you’re too smart for the freaks, but too much of a freak for the smart kids?”) and is given to tirades about her parents’ character flaws, people who don’t spay their pets, and like topics, Rachel’s emotional intensity, conveyed both in her fierce narrative and in long passages from her story, is compelling enough to draw readers along. Less compelling is the ending, in which Griffin snaps her out of a bout of wild, destructive grief, and the two adopt another, friendlier, stray dog. Still, fans of tales about teen writers, or stories with animal themes, will pant after this. (Fiction. 12-15)
Pub Date: April 12, 2002
ISBN: 0-374-37278-0
Page Count: 112
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2002
Lally uses a broad brush in this sexist allegory, contrasting—at length—the industrious female worker bees and the charming but dim-witted male drones, with their thoroughly ineffectual government and religion. As young Thora and her sharp-tongued friend Belle go about tending the hive and, later in the season, gathering nectar and pollen, the self-appointed Grand Drone creates a bureaucracy, dubbing dreamy Alfred Poet Laureate of the hive, charging disputatious Mo with seeing to it that the sun rises at dawn and sets at dusk, and leading ritual worship of the Great Drone in the Sky (familiarly known as the “GDS”). Expressing doubts about the GDS, scandalizing Alfred with the idea that the females’ Honey Dance might be art, suggesting to a confused Thora that all bees are free to make their own choices, Mo is a real troublemaker, though he loses some of his idealism after Belle is killed while driving off supposedly friendly wasps. In a poignant but ineffective ending, Mo and Alfred pass through disillusionment to wisdom as they’re driven out of the hive with the rest of the drones to die in the cold, and Thora, old and tattered, discovers in her last moments the peace of one whose work is done. Not Brewster’s quirky, accomplished drawings of insects with human heads, nor the author’s rich harvest of bee lore can rescue this labored satire. (Fiction. 12-15)
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-590-51038-X
Page Count: 226
Publisher: Levine/Scholastic
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 1998
Popular in England but never before published in America, the first book of Jarvis’s fantasy trilogy depicts an epic battle between good and evil. The side of good is represented by a society of harmonious, quiet-living mice who are aided and abetted by the more spiritual and mysterious bats above. Together they fight the evil, filthy rats, denizens of the dark and slimy sewers, who are ruled by a demonic overlord named Jupiter. The battle begins when a young mouse named Audrey Brown bravely slips between the bars of the basement grate, the portal between the mouse and rat universe, to search for her father, who has met with misadventure and disappeared into the hellish world beneath. As the stakes rise, Jarvis ratchets up the suspense, neatly juggling several story lines that culminate in a remarkable climactic disclosure. He does a good job, especially through the dialogue, of differentiating the multitude of mice, rat, and bat characters that populate the book. Still, the characters lack that elusive quality of lovability that makes the reader care deeply about their fate. Moreover, although the simultaneously symbolic and literal three-tiered world of bats, mice, and rats is well imagined and beautifully detailed, the narrative is rather dense, causing the book’s story engine to flag at several points. Although not right for every reader, Jarvis has delivered a robust book with a big-canvas plot that is tailor made for lovers of fantasy adventure and animal characters. (cast of characters, afterword) (Fiction. 10-14)
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2000
ISBN: 1-58717-021-3
Page Count: 240
Publisher: NorthSouth
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2000
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