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CRAZY MOON

Name: CRAZY MOON
Author: Lucia Greene
ISBN: 978-1-943424-35-1

by Lucia Greene , illustrated by Shannon Sands ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 8, 2018

A well-observed camp tale with an appealing young girl’s voice that falls short in its depiction of Native Americans.

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A preteen finds fun, friendship, and adventure at a summer camp in this children’s novel.

Madison Grey is a tad anxious about going to Crazy Moon sleep-away camp. This will be her first time away from home without her parents and three younger siblings. In this light, engaging first-person narrative for ages 7 and up, Greene (A Tunnel in the Pines, 2015) gives Madison an authentic, likable voice as she reacts alternately with nervousness, humor, curiosity, and thoughtfulness to her camp experiences. She falls in love with a horse named Mouse, plays water games, dabbles in crafts, toasts marshmallows, steals the spotlight in a talent show (due to a funny costume mishap), attends her first boy-girl dance, and makes new friends. Madison is described as white and “skinny.” One character is “a little heavy”; another is “small.” Some have brown skin, suggesting diversity (on one girl, “everything” is “brown, her skin, her long, dark hair, and long-lashed eyes”). This is reflected in one of the pleasant, full-page digital images by debut illustrator Sands. The author gives the girls distinctive personalities without stereotyping. Snobby Julie shows she has a conscience. A certain event makes Madison see clingy, overweight Nancy through new eyes. By the end of her stay, Madison feels a budding sense of independence. Mild scares include a tornado warning, a swarm of bees, and a food fight with briefly worrisome consequences. Greene brings summer camp to life from the affectionate perspective of someone who has been there, adding color and depth with small details. A hawk makes “slow, graceful circles” searching for prey; wood “hissed and popped” on the campfire, shooting “orange sparks high into the darkening sky.” Yet the book’s relatability for a diverse pool of readers is compromised by references painting Native Americans as a past, exotic “other.” When Madison grumbles about brushing her teeth during a camping trip, earnest Helen says that “American Indians” used pine to clean their teeth. They laugh when Julie jokes, “That’s because they all had buffalo breath.” While the author points out the girls’ ignorance through a campfire talk about the area’s history and “the Indians” who were “amazingly resourceful,” the portrait is still problematic.

A well-observed camp tale with an appealing young girl’s voice that falls short in its depiction of Native Americans.

Pub Date: June 8, 2018

ISBN: 978-1-943424-35-1

Page Count: 118

Publisher: North Country Press

Review Posted Online: May 31, 2019

Review Program: Kirkus Indie

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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SUMMER ISLAND

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2001

The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...

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Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.

Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.

The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.

Pub Date: March 1, 2001

ISBN: 0-609-60737-5

Page Count: 336

Publisher: Crown

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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LAST ORDERS

by Graham Swift ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 5, 1996

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Britisher Swift's sixth novel (Ever After, 1992 etc.) and fourth to appear here is a slow-to-start but then captivating tale of English working-class families in the four decades following WW II. When Jack Dodds dies suddenly of cancer after years of running a butcher shop in London, he leaves a strange request—namely, that his ashes be scattered off Margate pier into the sea. And who could better be suited to fulfill this wish than his three oldest drinking buddies—insurance man Ray, vegetable seller Lenny, and undertaker Vic, all of whom, like Jack himself, fought also as soldiers or sailors in the long-ago world war. Swift's narrative start, with its potential for the melodramatic, is developed instead with an economy, heart, and eye that release (through the characters' own voices, one after another) the story's humanity and depth instead of its schmaltz. The jokes may be weak and self- conscious when the three old friends meet at their local pub in the company of the urn holding Jack's ashes; but once the group gets on the road, in an expensive car driven by Jack's adoptive son, Vince, the story starts gradually to move forward, cohere, and deepen. The reader learns in time why it is that no wife comes along, why three marriages out of three broke apart, and why Vince always hated his stepfather Jack and still does—or so he thinks. There will be stories of innocent youth, suffering wives, early loves, lost daughters, secret affairs, and old antagonisms—including a fistfight over the dead on an English hilltop, and a strewing of Jack's ashes into roiling seawaves that will draw up feelings perhaps unexpectedly strong. Without affectation, Swift listens closely to the lives that are his subject and creates a songbook of voices part lyric, part epic, part working-class social realism—with, in all, the ring to it of the honest, human, and true.