Despite a few flaws, this tale offers some worthy anti-bullying pointers.
A bullied girl discovers a monster and her own courage in this debut illustrated children’s book.
When blue-skinned kids team up at the beach for a school sand castle competition, June gets left out. Though sad, she decides to work on her own. Bill, a strutting bully, insults June’s castle and stomps it flat. Others, including adults, just tell June to ignore him and toughen up. “Nobody likes you,” Bill tells June, and she believes him. She flees the competition, but Jonas, a kind classmate, follows to let her know he’s on her side. After some cloud watching, they hear a bird’s distress call and follow it to a garbage heap with a sign reading “TRASH-MONSTER. BEWARE!” A seagull is being held captive by the monster, Skull, but the children tell the bird: “Bullying is unacceptable!” Inspired and emboldened, the seagull stands up to Skull, who backs down when faced with the three acting together. Skull apologizes, saying he was treated like garbage and doesn’t know any other way. He is advised to let go of the past and start doing good deeds. He agrees and the four, bolstered by new self-worth, have an adventure in a ship created by Skull. Returning to the sand castle competition with her new friends, June stands up to Bill with confidence in herself, and he backs down. In her book, Agudelo adds to the growing children’s literature on bullying. The useful advice here covers basics like developing self-esteem, being a good bystander (like Jonas), forming a united front against bullies, and firmly standing up for yourself. Many experts also recommend getting adult intervention. But (perhaps realistically) the adults here seem inclined to let Bill be Bill. It’s less realistic that Skull turns on a dime to become a good friend. The story is told in rhyme, but the rhythm can be rocky (“Nearby, her peers teamed up in groups of two or more, / for a school art competition / to sculpt a unique sand castle on the shore”). In addition, there are some infelicities, such as rhyming “sight” and “site” and “he said with despise.” The watercolor images by debut illustrator Restrepo have a lot of expression, style, and verve, and do much to expand the storytelling.
Despite a few flaws, this tale offers some worthy anti-bullying pointers.Pub Date: June 20, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-9983011-2-9
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Time Tunnel Media
Review Posted Online: July 12, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her...
Another middle-aged mom in a muddle.
After years of false starts and big hopes, Elizabeth’s ruggedly handsome husband Jack, a former football star, just landed a spot as a sportscaster on national news. He still loves her, even though much younger women are giving him come-hither looks. Heck, he doesn’t want to betray the love of his life after she helped him kick drugs and stuck by him even when he was a struggling has-been. And won’t it seem hypocritical if he fools around with his sexy assistant while he does in-depth reporting on a rape case involving a famous basketball center? Well, he fools around anyway. Elizabeth, nicknamed Birdie, knows nothing of this, but she withdraws from Jack when her hard-drinking, salt-of-the-earth father has a stroke and dies. Now no one will call her “sugar beet” ever again. Time to return home to Tennessee and contend with Anita, the sort-of-evil stepmother so trashy she wears pink puffy slippers all day long. Naturally, it turns out that Anita actually has a heart of gold and knows a few things about Birdie’s dead mother that were hushed up for years. Mom was an artist, just like Birdie, and an old scandal comes to light as Anita unrolls a vibrant canvas that portrays her secret lover. Perhaps, Birdie muses, her mother died of heartbreak, never having followed her true love or developed her talent. Has she, too, compromised everything she holds dear? Hoping to find out, Birdie joins a support group that promises to reconnect confused women with their passion. She and Jack separate, prompting a how-dare-you fit from their grown daughters. Will Birdie fly her empty nest? Will she go back to college for a degree in art? Will her brooding watercolors ever sell?
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her previous tales (Summer Island, 2001, etc.).Pub Date: July 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-345-45071-X
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2002
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