Delightful froth with just a touch of early-adolescent angst.
On her 13th birthday, Molly learns the truth about her mermaid heritage in this series opener.
Molly Seabrook and her four sisters live in a lighthouse and work in their mother’s fish-and-chip shop. Molly’s job is to dress up as a giant haddock and pass out flyers advertising the shop to people on the pier. It’s not a job that guarantees her any popularity, and Molly’s a frequent target of the pretty, blonde class bully. On the night of Molly’s birthday, her mother and older sisters drag her down to the water’s edge and let her in on the family secret. Now that she’s come of age, Molly will sprout a tale and gills whenever she gets too close to large bodies of water. But unlike her sisters, who adore being half-mermaid (their long-absent father is human), for Molly it’s just more fuel to the fire of her self-loathing. How can she ever be popular, or even just ordinary, if she becomes a big, helpless, floppy fishgirl every time she gets too near unexpected water? Molly’s adolescent miseries provide a believable note of heft in an otherwise-lighthearted tale full of fart and puke jokes. Clunky Americanization of this book first published in the U.K. in 2019 adds confusion but does not materially detract from the humorous charm. Most characters are white, and Molly’s best friend is of Chinese descent.
Delightful froth with just a touch of early-adolescent angst. (Fantasy. 9-11)Pub Date: June 2, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-7282-1420-7
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Sourcebooks Young Readers
Review Posted Online: March 14, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2020
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
A fizzy mix of low humor and brisk action, with promise of more of both to come.
Heroic deeds await Isaac after his little sister runs into the school basement and is captured by elves.
Even though their school is a spooky old castle transplanted stone by stone from Germany, Isaac and his two friends, Max and Emma, little suspect that an entire magical kingdom lies beneath—a kingdom run by elves, policed by oversized rats in uniform, and populated by captives who start out human but undergo transformative “weirding.” These revelations await Isaac and sidekicks as they nerve themselves to trail his bossy younger sib, Lily, through a shadowy storeroom and into a tunnel, across a wide lake, and into a city lit by half-human fireflies, where they are cast together into a dungeon. Can they escape before they themselves start changing? Gibson pits his doughty rescuers against such adversaries as an elven monarch who emits truly kingly belches and a once-human jailer with a self-picking nose. Tests of mettle range from a riddle contest to a face-off with the menacing head rat Shelfliver, and a helter-skelter chase finally leads rescuers and rescued back to the aboveground. Plainly, though, there is further rescuing to be done.
A fizzy mix of low humor and brisk action, with promise of more of both to come. (Fantasy. 9-11)Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-62370-255-7
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Capstone Young Readers
Review Posted Online: June 28, 2015
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