1. Fresh. 2. Fun. 3. Entertaining.
When fifth-grader Andromeda moves from Brooklyn to a small town, she must deal with all of the issues a move like that could create.
She’s pretty sure she caused the move by accidentally revealing to her school principal that she didn’t live in the correct school district. Her older brother, Ted, blames her for his loneliness now that they’ve arrived in tiny Clover Gap. Her parents, apartment dwellers, have lots to learn about maintaining a house. Annie is sure that she should conceal her fabulous memory from her new classmates and does everything she can to melt into the background. New classmate Zora reaches out to Annie, but that leaves Zora’s other friend, Amelia, feeling angry, vindictive, and very unwelcoming. (Zora is also one of the only black characters in both the book and Clover Gap, a fact that is addressed matter-of-factly and with sensitivity.) Meanwhile, Annie’s best friend from the city gradually loses touch with her. All of these deftly interrelated plotlines are related in the lists that Annie keeps—lists of just about everything—and it’s these, and the fun twist they create, that elevate the tale over the pack, adding an amusing dimension to a well-worked trope. Annie’s slightly tongue-in-cheek voice, revealed in the lists and occasional narrative paragraphs, breathes life into the many characters around her, adding believability.
1. Fresh. 2. Fun. 3. Entertaining. (Fiction. 8-11)Pub Date: May 29, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5247-6509-5
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Feb. 18, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
However the compelling fitness of theme and event and the apt but unexpected imagery (the opening sentences compare the...
At a time when death has become an acceptable, even voguish subject in children's fiction, Natalie Babbitt comes through with a stylistic gem about living forever.
Protected Winnie, the ten-year-old heroine, is not immortal, but when she comes upon young Jesse Tuck drinking from a secret spring in her parents' woods, she finds herself involved with a family who, having innocently drunk the same water some 87 years earlier, haven't aged a moment since. Though the mood is delicate, there is no lack of action, with the Tucks (previously suspected of witchcraft) now pursued for kidnapping Winnie; Mae Tuck, the middle aged mother, striking and killing a stranger who is onto their secret and would sell the water; and Winnie taking Mae's place in prison so that the Tucks can get away before she is hanged from the neck until....? Though Babbitt makes the family a sad one, most of their reasons for discontent are circumstantial and there isn't a great deal of wisdom to be gleaned from their fate or Winnie's decision not to share it.
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1975
ISBN: 0312369816
Page Count: 164
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: April 13, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1975
SEEN & HEARD
Certain to elicit both gales of giggles and winces of sympathy (not to mention recognition) from young readers.
First volume of a planned three, this edited version of an ongoing online serial records a middle-school everykid’s triumphs and (more often) tribulations through the course of a school year.
Largely through his own fault, mishaps seem to plague Greg at every turn, from the minor freak-outs of finding himself permanently seated in class between two pierced stoners and then being saddled with his mom for a substitute teacher, to being forced to wrestle in gym with a weird classmate who has invited him to view his “secret freckle.” Presented in a mix of legible “hand-lettered” text and lots of simple cartoon illustrations with the punch lines often in dialogue balloons, Greg’s escapades, unwavering self-interest and sardonic commentary are a hoot and a half.
Certain to elicit both gales of giggles and winces of sympathy (not to mention recognition) from young readers. (Fiction. 9-11)Pub Date: April 1, 2007
ISBN: 0-8109-9313-9
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Amulet/Abrams
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2007
SEEN & HEARD
PERSPECTIVES
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