A moiled, disappointingly passionless view of a people burdened by grief and fear after years of unchecked violence. Told that his aunt Petrona is ill, Juan, 17, leaves his family in Bogot† for Punta Verde, her country estate, where he learns that it's not sickness, but loneliness and fear that have prompted her request for company. Fear of what? Despite plenty of hints, Juan repeatedly needs to have it spelled out: Military troops and guerilla forces have become interchangeable in their terrorist tactics and lack of discipline, and the death toll has been rising almost daily. Juan meets a confusingly large number of campesinos, and Jenkins (Celebrating the Hero, 1993, etc.) shields him, and readers, from any direct experience with soldiers or mayhem—it's all secondhand or offstage. Several subplots are shoehorned in: Petrona reveals that she's actually his grandmother; and while revelations about his father's past are changing Juan from an archetypally sullen teen to a loving son, he meets and falls for Chia, a librarian who, after plenty of clumsy foreshadowing, is killed by a bomb. There is little sense of place and no reason given for the violence. Also missing is the terrifying immediacy of Frances Temple's A Taste Of Salt (1992) and, as is found in Louise Moeri's The Forty-Third War (1989), a clear vision of a society in which warfare is endemic. (Fiction. 11-13)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-525-67538-8
Page Count: 156
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
The lush tropical rainforest serves as an unexpected but colorful setting for this sequel to Smith's Thunder Cave (1995, not reviewed). Jake Lansa, 14, is angry when his father, Robert ``Doc'' Lansa, leaves him in the care of a retirement home with his grandfather, while he goes off to a jaguar preserve in the jungles of Manaus, near Brazil. The early scenes in the retirement facility are humorous and touching, but the pace accelerates once Jake flies down for a visit with his dad. In one of the novel's most dramatic moments, a confrontation between father and son is interrupted by an explosion aboard the boat Doc has chartered. Jake is forced to become the ultralight pilot of the expedition, and to hire the mysterious Captain Silver to take them upriver. Jake's crash course in piloting is exciting, as is the journey. The rainforest in the background brings the plight of this endangered environment into focus for young readers: Smith's portrayal of the decimated forests, the filthy strip-mining towns, and the desolate native tribes is haunting. The mystery aboard ship unravels at a suspenseful pace, and while everyone must work together to insure their survival, Jake emerges a hero. A first-rate adventure about greed, mutual dependence, and family. (Fiction. 11-13)
Pub Date: May 1, 1997
ISBN: 0-7868-0282-0
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Hyperion
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 1997
Completing the switch in narrative view begun in Julie (1994), the sequel to Julie of the Wolves (1972), George continues her tale of the Avalik River pack entirely from the standpoint of its members: Kapu, the young new alpha; his daughter and successor, Sweet Fur Amy; Ice Blink, a lone wolf who carries rabies—and Willow Pup Julie, who lives in town but puts in appearances to inspect new pups or perform rescues. George invests all of her characters equally with expressive language, customary patterns of behavior, distinct personalities, and rich emotional lives. The wolfpack culture is complex and thoroughly articulated; readers who follow Kapu through seasons fat and lean, births, deaths, and challenges (serious, but always bloodless) to his leadership will be as devastated as the pack is when he is trapped and removed for a scientific experiment. Working mostly offstage, Julie engineers his return, but he does not rejoin the pack. The rhythms of life on the tundra are slow ones, and the only deaths George describes explicitly are those of wolves who succumb to the contagion that Ice Blink brings; the result is a story that flows at an even, deliberate pace, without—save for the brief outbreak of rabies—much suspense or sense of danger. The wolf's-eye view will draw new readers to the books, but fans of the first books, already well-versed in wolf society, may find many of the situations repetitive. (Fiction. 11-13)
Pub Date: Sept. 30, 1997
ISBN: 0-06-027406-9
Page Count: 192
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1997
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