Fifth-grade classmates Ginger Bidwell and Lucas Ridley, both avid sports fans, were rivals long before they became unwilling step-siblings four months ago — but their happy parents are unfailingly patient, even through most of the disasters. Mom wins a dream weekend for four — all expenses paid to the Super Bowl in New Orleans — during which everything goes wrong from the time the tickets don't arrive: the plane's late, obnoxious strangers ``befriend'' them, and then the replacement tickets never materialize, so that the family ends by watching the game on TV in their hotel room — in the company of several unwelcome extras. Predictably, Mom and Dad finally lose their cool, providing a negative example that nudges the kids toward beginning to mend their differences. The situations here never get as comic as Twohill probably intended, perhaps because the family's difficulties are all too plausible; nor does she delve beneath the kids' bickering surface enough to make this more than another sitcom about learning to get along in a new family. Still, a moderately amusing, easily read example of its genre. (Fiction. 8-11)
Pub Date: March 29, 1991
ISBN: 0-02-789691-9
Page Count: 160
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1991
BOOK REVIEW
Stagestruck Annie sees an opportunity for breaking into show biz almost everywhere she looks—even in the dairy section of the supermarket that her third-grade class visits on a field trip- -which is why she ends up dropping yogurt on the floor. Still, from her point of view, slapping her tormentor, Matthew, with a dead fish is an involuntary act. But her teacher, who doesn't see it that way, abruptly ends the class trip and gives Annie a good talking-to on the way back. Since she's in disgrace, Annie gets the part no one wants in the class play on nutrition—an artichoke. In the event, she's a pretty good one, and also levelheaded enough to save the show when Matthew forgets his lines. Then, true to form, she topples into her classmates, causing an avalanche of ``foods.'' Annie's narration has an engagingly light, deadpan humor. Good fun. (Fiction. 8-10)
Pub Date: Oct. 6, 1992
ISBN: 0-671-75910-8
Page Count: 53
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1992
A charming, old-fashioned story of poverty's hardships dispelled in time for Christmas, set in Britain soon after WW II. Tilly and her widowed mother share a rundown apartment, supported by the mother's sewing. When her mother falls ill, Tilly cares for her with the help of a kind doctor; then, when a leaky roof ruins an unfinished wedding dress of expensive satin, she bravely elects to confide in the bride-to be, though she has previously felt uncomfortable in the well-to-do Kendalls' home. Miss Kendall and her family respond generously, not only providing a hamper of goodies and funds for new satin but also insisting that the stingy landlord make much-needed repairs. Meanwhile, Tilly's friend downstairs—a nice old lady who has trunks full of treasures from better times—has given her some treasured ornaments that help make Christmas complete. The sentimentality here is effectively tempered by the brisk, economical telling. Littlewood adds frequent crosshatched vignettes, in the manner of Ardizzone, plus a dozen sweetly evocative full-page paintings. Without the verve of Rumer Godden's stories, but with similar appeal: a pleasing holiday heartwarmer. (Fiction. 8-11)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1992
ISBN: 1-56402-111-4
Page Count: 96
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1992
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