Fried bread, gray rain, drab institutions. There’s a lot to get used to when a spunky American tomboy and her family temporarily relocate to England circa 1950. After experiencing a repressive London school, Libby is grateful to be transferred to a Queen Anne manse on 88 acres of classic British countryside, with horse paddocks and wood-paneled dormitories straight out of the storybooks she reads obsessively. Young and uncertain, Libby soon warms to the place, slowly reining in her unbridled nature before her bittersweet return home. Told from Libby’s POV—through somber narration and vintage sidebar images—the slight story’s coming-of-age elements seem oddly archaic but ring true; they’re based on the author’s own childhood memories. Small daily scenarios are reflected through a rear-view mirror. This surprising emotional distance and less-is-more storytelling underwhelms the senses. The elegant simplicity echoes the prim discipline of classic boarding-school life, and politely nods to “Little Women” with its docile manner and Libby’s secret admiration of Jo, a yet-to-be-discovered writer like herself. Harking back to gentler times, this winsome, nostalgic memoir is as delicate and old-fashioned as a doily on a wingback chair. (Fiction. 8-11)
Pub Date: June 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-316-61443-2
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Megan Tingley/Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2004
Categories: CHILDREN'S SOCIAL THEMES
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BOOK REVIEW
A shy fourth-grader leads the revolt when censors decimate her North Carolina school’s library.
In a tale that is dominated but not overwhelmed by its agenda, Gratz takes Amy Anne, a young black bibliophile, from the devastating discovery that her beloved From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler has been removed from the library at the behest of Mrs. Spencer, a despised classmate’s mom, to a qualified defense of intellectual freedom at a school board meeting: “Nobody has the right to tell you what books you can and can’t read except your parents.” Meanwhile, as more books vanish, Amy Anne sets up a secret lending library of banned titles in her locker—a ploy that eventually gets her briefly suspended by the same unsympathetic principal who fires the school’s doctorate-holding white librarian for defiantly inviting Dav Pilkey in for an author visit. Characters frequently serve as mouthpieces for either side, sometimes deadly serious and other times tongue-in-cheek (“I don’t know about you guys, but ever since I read Wait Till Helen Comes, I’ve been thinking about worshipping Satan”). Indeed, Amy Anne’s narrative is positively laced with real titles that have been banned or challenged and further enticing teasers for them.
Contrived at some points, polemic at others, but a stout defense of the right to read. (discussion guide) (Fiction. 9-11)Pub Date: Aug. 29, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-7653-8556-7
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Starscape/Tom Doherty
Review Posted Online: June 4, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2017
Categories: CHILDREN'S SOCIAL THEMES
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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
Categories: CHILDREN'S SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY | CHILDREN'S SOCIAL THEMES
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