For eight-year-old Barney (short for Barnaby), being haunted begins with that "faint dizzy twist in the world around him, the thin singing drone [in] his ear" . . . then a figure slowly forming out of the air, lamenting in a sort husky voice, "Barnaby's dead! Barnaby's dead! I'm going to be very lonely." When Barney learns later that day that great-uncle Barnaby bas just died, he gasps "I thought it was me!" and faints away. But the haunting continues, with footsteps coming nearer and the voice insisting that Barney must go with him. "You should see yourself," says notebook-scribbling older sister Tabitha, a future novelist who chatters incessantly. "You're really starting to look haunted, you know . . . sort of yellowish and transparent like cooking oil, and your eyes are funny." The eyes, Barney too has noticed, are sometimes not his own: He comes to feel "like a coat or jacket his Great-Uncle Cole can put on and off at will." For by then the children have learned from Grandfather Scholar and his brother, Great-Uncle Guy and Great-Uncle Alberic of a fifth brother, Great-Uncle Cole, who vanished from the scene at twelve. New Great-Uncle Guy reveals to a concerned Tabitha that Cole is a magician; that his order-loving mother, the still-imperious Great-Granny, fought and rejected him from his birth; and that Cole is still alive. Guy, a pediatrician, offers Tabitha a valid psychological explanation for Barney's haunting, which manages to strengthen the story without explaining away the haunting: Even Guy himself doesn't really believe it. The confrontation comes when Cole shows up to claim Barney, whom he believes to be a fellow magician—and Troy, the oldest of the children and the silent, reclusive, and "eerily" tidy one, unmasks the repressive Great-Granny as a magician and, in a series of razzle-dazzle transformations, reveals herself as another. (Of her father's reaction, Troy says later, "I can feel him looking at me and—I don't know—shrinking away. . . . He'll never get over it altogether.") You may have guessed her secret early on, or find the magic less impressive once it's out. But Mahy's deftly penetrating and delightfully phrased observations of the family don't slacken. (In the end we have poor Tabitha, crushed that she's turned out to be the only "ordinary" one, but busy interviewing Cole and taking notes on the whole affair.) Most compellingly, Mahy projects the haunting with such imaginative force and seriousness that you'll hear those footsteps and that husky voice as Barney does, just as you see Barney's pale transparent face and strange bruised eyes through Tabitha's watchful ones.
Pub Date: Oct. 22, 1982
ISBN: 0141315830
Page Count: -
Publisher: Atheneum
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1982
Broccoli: No way is James going to eat broccoli. “It’s disgusting,” says James. Well then, James, says his father, let’s consider the alternatives: some wormy dirt, perhaps, some stinky socks, some pre-chewed gum? James reconsiders the broccoli, but—milk? “Blech,” says James. Right, says his father, who needs strong bones? You’ll be great at hide-and-seek, though not so great at baseball and kickball and even tickling the dog’s belly. James takes a mouthful. So it goes through lumpy oatmeal, mushroom lasagna and slimy eggs, with James’ father parrying his son’s every picky thrust. And it is fun, because the father’s retorts are so outlandish: the lasagna-making troll in the basement who will be sent back to the rat circus, there to endure the rodent’s vicious bites; the uneaten oatmeal that will grow and grow and probably devour the dog that the boy won’t be able to tickle any longer since his bones are so rubbery. Schneider’s watercolors catch the mood of gentle ribbing, the looks of bewilderment and surrender and the deadpanned malarkey. It all makes James’ father’s last urging—“I was just going to say that you might like them if you tried them”—wholly fresh and unexpected advice. (Early reader. 5-9)
Pub Date: May 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-547-14956-1
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Clarion Books
Review Posted Online: April 4, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Although the love comes shining through, the text often confuses in straining for patterned simplicity.
A collection of parental wishes for a child.
It starts out simply enough: two children run pell-mell across an open field, one holding a high-flying kite with the line “I wish you more ups than downs.” But on subsequent pages, some of the analogous concepts are confusing or ambiguous. The line “I wish you more tippy-toes than deep” accompanies a picture of a boy happily swimming in a pool. His feet are visible, but it's not clear whether he's floating in the deep end or standing in the shallow. Then there's a picture of a boy on a beach, his pockets bulging with driftwood and colorful shells, looking frustrated that his pockets won't hold the rest of his beachcombing treasures, which lie tantalizingly before him on the sand. The line reads: “I wish you more treasures than pockets.” Most children will feel the better wish would be that he had just the right amount of pockets for his treasures. Some of the wordplay, such as “more can than knot” and “more pause than fast-forward,” will tickle older readers with their accompanying, comical illustrations. The beautifully simple pictures are a sweet, kid- and parent-appealing blend of comic-strip style and fine art; the cast of children depicted is commendably multiethnic.
Although the love comes shining through, the text often confuses in straining for patterned simplicity. (Picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: April 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4521-2699-9
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Chronicle Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2015
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