Looking back from old age, Lucy Watson describes the little sister that only she really loved—``our Sarah,'' who was born when Lucy was six and disappeared a few years later, while Cromwell's soldiers were destroying churches all over England. Slow of speech and dauntingly unpredictable, Sarah was thought by many to be a changeling; when she vanished just at the time her mother died in a later childbirth, her own father named the new baby Sarah in the hope that she was his own real child returned at last. Only Lucy believed that the first Sarah had simply wandered off and might be alive; and though Lucy never saw Sarah again, she eventually learned that this was indeed what happened, and that Sarah found others to love and take her in before straying yet again. With carefully chosen detail expertly woven into her narrative, Hersom brings the life of the common people in the Yorkshire Dales of the 17th century vividly to life; her style, colored by local expressions yet easily understood (especially with the help of the short glossary), is lively and consistent, with the pleasing cadence of fine storytelling. An enriching, enjoyable mystery with an unusual cast of well-realized characters. (Fiction. 11-15)
Pub Date: Sept. 26, 1991
ISBN: 0-671-74225-6
Page Count: 165
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1991
Norbert Meaney earns his moniker by throwing horses through windows and terrorizing children—because, he boasts, he has no heart. To save their lives and town, young Gregory and Maw (a fiery-tempered crow who has raised the lad) propose taking The Mean One back in time to find his missing organ. The humor here is in contrasting Gregory—likable, gentle, enjoying a close relationship with his feathered parent—and the rank, bellowing, hairy giant. But that's not enough to carry a story of this length, and Meaney never seems all that nasty anyway; in the end, heart recovered (he lost it at 13 to a pretty classmate), he charges off to bathe and right all the wrongs he's committed. An aimless and loose-jointed yarn, but mildly funny. (Fiction. 11-13)
Pub Date: Sept. 21, 1992
ISBN: 0-395-60821-X
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Clarion Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1992
A brief but authoritative update on the archeological find of the century. In the same large format as Beattie's Buried in Ice (p. 392) and other ``Time Quest'' books, Egyptologist Reeves (The Complete Tutankhamun, 1990) describes the ``real-life discovery of Tutankhamun's treasures.'' The tale is oft-told, but the authors supply behind-the-scenes details: how the excavation became a media event; why Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon secretly visited the burial chamber the night before its official unsealing; the struggle for control over its contents—in fact, Reeves reveals, antiquities thought lost have turned up, hidden in Carnarvon's English castle, as recently as 1988, and he hints at more to come. Profusely illustrated with photos, maps, and paintings (particularly valuable are cutaway reconstructions showing the original disposition of major objects); sidebar essays; glossary; small, current bibliography. (Nonfiction. 11-15)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-590-45752-7
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1992
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