This second of the ``Starbuck Family Adventures'' runs a gamut of genres from ecology thriller to fantasy. Fraternal twins Liberty and July travel to the Florida Keys with their younger identical siblings, their father, and their teacher Zanny. All four children are now proficient in talking to one another telepathically. In addition, Liberty and July connect up with a dolphin community and learn that the toxic disposal industry in the area has seriously injured an ``albino'' dolphin, turning it lavender. A boy they meet, also exposed to the toxin, has burned purple hands. Here, unfortunately, the unfolding of a solid environmental mystery turns limp and flowery whenever leatherback turtle nestings or the dolphins are discussed, while the expansiveness in these passages clashes with the twins' no- nonsense approach to their discoveries. Some facts are also so oversimplified as to be misleading (e.g. the hatching of leatherbacks), or so glossed over they become gratuitous (a lesson on navigation). In paying tribute to the Keys, Lasky is affectionate and winning; but a consistent style and a truly persuasive narrative are sacrificed in the process. (Fiction. 8- 12)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-15-273533-X
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1992
A candid and powerful reckoning of history.
Summer is off to a terrible start for 12-year old African-American Candice Miller.
Six months after her parents’ divorce, Candice and her mother leave Atlanta to spend the summer in Lambert, South Carolina, at her grandmother’s old house. When her grandmother Abigail passed two years ago, in 2015, Candice and her mother struggled to move on. Now, without any friends, a computer, cellphone, or her grandmother, Candice suffers immense loneliness and boredom. When she starts rummaging through the attic and stumbles upon a box of her grandmother’s belongings, she discovers an old letter that details a mysterious fortune buried in Lambert and that asks Abigail to find the treasure. After Candice befriends the shy, bookish African-American kid next door, 11-year-old Brandon Jones, the pair set off investigating the clues. Each new revelation uncovers a long history of racism and tension in the small town and how one family threatened the black/white status quo. Johnson’s latest novel holds racism firmly in the light. Candice and Brandon discover the joys and terrors of the reality of being African-American in the 1950s. Without sugarcoating facts or dousing it in post-racial varnish, the narrative lets the children absorb and reflect on their shared history. The town of Lambert brims with intrigue, keeping readers entranced until the very last page.
A candid and powerful reckoning of history. (Historical mystery. 8-12)Pub Date: March 27, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-545-94617-9
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Levine/Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Dec. 2, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2018
PROFILES
The whimsy is slight—the story is not—and both its interest and its vocabulary are for the youngest members of this age...
Beverly Cleary has written all kinds of books (the most successful ones about the irrepressible Henry Huggins) but this is her first fantasy.
Actually it's plain clothes fantasy grounded in the everyday—except for the original conceit of a mouse who can talk and ride a motorcycle. A toy motorcycle, which belongs to Keith, a youngster, who comes to the hotel where Ralph lives with his family; Ralph and Keith become friends, Keith gives him a peanut butter sandwich, but finally Ralph loses the motorcycle—it goes out with the dirty linen. Both feel dreadfully; it was their favorite toy; but after Keith gets sick, and Ralph manages to find an aspirin for him in a nearby room, and the motorcycle is returned, it is left with Ralph....
The whimsy is slight—the story is not—and both its interest and its vocabulary are for the youngest members of this age group. (Fantasy. 8-12)Pub Date: Sept. 22, 1965
ISBN: 0380709244
Page Count: 180
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Oct. 16, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1965
BOOK TO SCREEN
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