With a feeling that’s more experimental than wholehearted, this collection is one most kids will pass on.
Picture-book author Croza (From There to Here, 2014, etc.) stretches out in a collection of short stories for older readers.
In the opening selection, young Charity is witness to the decline of her parents’ marriage as her mother struggles to assert her independence and free them both from her father’s tyranny. In another, Jasmine, a young teenage mom, has been abandoned by her own mother and endures the scrutiny of her peers as she adjusts to life at home with a new baby and her loving grandfather. In “A Beautiful Smile,” which echoes Croza’s picture-book stories, a transplant from the rural north begins her first day of school in Toronto. Her story is littered with boldface words, which readers may find more distracting than illuminating. After a host of rather depressing stories, the final tale, “Book of Dreams,” holds a bit of a spark, as aspiring artist Mike leaves his single mom and her beer-drinking boyfriend at home in front of the TV to go to his job at the local restaurant, where he’s found a sense of family and belonging. Though it appears the author is attempting to highlight teen stories that are not so glamorous, her long-form prose style is lackluster and at times distancing. She experiments with a talking-doll protagonist in one story and a cemetery-dwelling squirrel in another, two tales that feel distinctly disconnected from the rest of the collection.
With a feeling that’s more experimental than wholehearted, this collection is one most kids will pass on. (Short stories. 12-15)Pub Date: May 1, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-77306-032-3
Page Count: 96
Publisher: Groundwood
Review Posted Online: March 18, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Things lost, things found, and their seekers are at the center of this novel about a girl’s prolonged mourning for her mother. In the wake of the sudden death of her mother, Sammy finds that her only consolation has been her best friend Bones, who shares with her the hope that their endless digging in their neighbors’ yards and the surrounding countryside will lead them to a magic discovery. Then Sammy’s long-absent Aunt Constance, her mother’s sister, comes for a visit. She is a real “finder,” sought out by others who have lost people and need comfort, answers, or both. In spite of that gift, Aunt Constance is unhappy; she is hounded by people who need her, and has no real home of her own. Worse, she has never been able to locate the one thing that means anything to her, the top half of a photograph of Sammy’s mother that has been placed in a threadbare pink satin jewelry box, which has been hidden. Sammy, anxious to locate anything that was her mother’s, quietly joins the search and succeeds, coming to terms with her loss and seeing that she has a real future, her own way. This tender and touching story of love, loss, and rediscovery is strongly plotted and poetically told, but the characters make it count; every one of them is someone readers will want to meet again. (Fiction. 10-13)
Pub Date: March 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-385-32678-5
Page Count: 152
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 1999
Emily Louise is certain that the new girl moving in next door will be simply awful. Working herself into a frenzy (in long passages of text that take the conceit just about as far as it can go), she imagines a terror of a child named Shelley Boo who is a swing swiper, eats nothing but peanut butter, has “drillions and drillions” of baseball cards, and steals Emily’s best friend, Henry. Stone’s exuberant color drawings, filled with whimsical animals and reminiscent of folk art, are less effective here than in What Night Do Angels Wander? (1998). Children will still identify with Emily’s anxiety about a new neighbor and share her relief when she finally does meet the infamous “Shelley Boo,” who is really named Elizabeth. (Picture book. 4-8)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-316-81677-9
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1999
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