A refugee-adoption tale, minus a real country of origin. Babo lives in a broken-down circus camp in an unnamed war-torn country. Americans visit and adopt her; she goes reluctantly, loath to part with her fellow “leftover kids” and guardian, Auntie Moo, and skeptical that Americans could accept her broken eye and missing digits. Renamed Betti in America, this iron-strong girl fights hard against adapting, because her old circus parents are “the Tallest Woman in the World with a Tail” and “Green Alligator Man,” and she plans to run away home. Despite a first-person narration, the text sometimes winks at readers over Betti’s misunderstandings (TVs have people trapped inside as punishment) and implies humor or charm about mistakes (“swimming poo,” repeatedly, and “toes” for toast). For all her individual word errors, however, her structural comprehension of English defies belief. The story respects Babo/Betti as a unique, wounded, fiercely responsible individual, but the realism stumbles into uneasy allegory with the portrayal of her unidentified, nonwhite, nobly destitute, filthy and ignorant birth country—especially in contrast to benevolent savior America. (author’s note) (Fiction. 9-11)
Pub Date: May 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-8037-3388-6
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 5, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2010
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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