An educational, if slightly uneven, novel of natural disaster.
Gruenberg, the author of Hummer (2021), writes about three young siblings escaping the Great Michigan Fire of 1871 in this historical middle-grade novel.
At church, 11-year-old Lyle Hemmis worries about going to hell as a raging forest fire threatens to overtake his town. His family includes his father; his pregnant stepmother, Winny; his brother, Rudy; and his sister, Aggie. A ringing church bell indicates that the Eagle Fire Company is sending out the horses; as neighbor Mr. Post waters his house down, Lyle selects some string, trinkets, and jacks, as well as his father’s watch, to save. The family leaves their house, but the siblings jump off the surrey when they hear horses in distress at Mr. Boone’s stable. The children rescue five horses, including their own, named Scarlet. Now separated from their parents, the kids decide to follow the crowd, riding or leading the animals as they attempt to find safety. They go into the nearby Black Lake, but then Lyle wonders if the water will heat up or if they could drown. Lyle saves an old woman, whom he later recognizes as their neighbor, Mrs. Flikkema. In a survival scene that some readers may find discomfiting, Lyle and Aggie squeeze the teats of a horse to drink her milk to slake their desperate thirst. Lyle, understandably, cries several times over the course of the story. Later, Winny goes into labor, and Lyle worries that she’ll die in childbirth like his mother. The author’s descriptions of the fire’s effects are vivid, as when soot “burned inside his nose and reddened the rims of [Lyle’s] eyelids.” Gruenberg also clearly and informatively explains firefighting techniques of the time, and touches on salient themes of religion, deforestation, and loss. However, at points, the characters’ speech seems anachronistic; for example, the word backpack wasn’t in use until the early 20th century. That said, because the novel is set across only a few days, it keeps up a good, brisk pace.
An educational, if slightly uneven, novel of natural disaster.Pub Date: Oct. 22, 2022
ISBN: 9789198631784
Page Count: 200
Publisher: Kenda Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 26, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Entrancing and uplifting.
A small dog, the elderly woman who owns him, and a homeless girl come together to create a tale of serendipity.
Piper, almost 12, her parents, and her younger brother are at the bottom of a long slide toward homelessness. Finally in a family shelter, Piper finds that her newfound safety gives her the opportunity to reach out to someone who needs help even more. Jewel, mentally ill, lives in the park with her dog, Baby. Unwilling to leave her pet, and forbidden to enter the shelter with him, she struggles with the winter weather. Ree, also homeless and with a large dog, helps when she can, but after Jewel gets sick and is hospitalized, Baby’s taken to the animal shelter, and Ree can’t manage the complex issues alone. It’s Piper, using her best investigative skills, who figures out Jewel’s backstory. Still, she needs all the help of the shelter Firefly Girls troop that she joins to achieve her accomplishment: to raise enough money to provide Jewel and Baby with a secure, hopeful future and, maybe, with their kindness, to inspire a happier story for Ree. Told in the authentic alternating voices of loving child and loyal dog, this tale could easily slump into a syrupy melodrama, but Pyron lets her well-drawn characters earn their believable happy ending, step by challenging step, by reaching out and working together. Piper, her family, and Jewel present white; Pyron uses hair and naming convention, respectively, to cue Ree as black and Piper’s friend Gabriela as Latinx.
Entrancing and uplifting. (Fiction. 9-12)Pub Date: Aug. 13, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-06-283922-0
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Katherine Tegen/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: April 9, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2019
Though occasionally heavy-handed, this debut offers a vivid glimpse of the 1960s South through the eyes of a spirited girl...
The closing of her favorite swimming pool opens 11-year-old Gloriana Hemphill’s eyes to the ugliness of racism in a small Mississippi town in 1964.
Glory can’t believe it… the Hanging Moss Community Pool is closing right before her July Fourth birthday. Not only that, she finds out the closure’s not for the claimed repairs needed, but so Negroes can’t swim there. Tensions have been building since “Freedom Workers” from the North started shaking up status quo, and Glory finds herself embroiled in it when her new, white friend from Ohio boldly drinks from the “Colored Only” fountain. The Hemphills’ African-American maid, Emma, a mother figure to Glory and her sister Jesslyn, tells her, “Don’t be worrying about what you can’t fix, Glory honey.” But Glory does, becoming an activist herself when she writes an indignant letter to the newspaper likening “hateful prejudice” to “dog doo” that makes her preacher papa proud. When she’s not saving the world, reading Nancy Drew or eating Dreamsicles, Glory shares the heartache of being the kid sister of a preoccupied teenager, friendship gone awry and the terrible cost of blabbing people’s secrets… mostly in a humorously sassy first-person voice.
Though occasionally heavy-handed, this debut offers a vivid glimpse of the 1960s South through the eyes of a spirited girl who takes a stand. (Historical fiction. 9-12)Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-545-33180-7
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Sept. 27, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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