This sequel to A Mid-Semester Night’s Dream (2004) takes a humorous yet recognizable look at young teens’ trials, tribulations and friendships. Morgan Yates, a 14-year-old human, is the (un)lucky recipient of a visit from her fairy-godmother-in-training, the eternally oblivious Gretta. The teen fairy visits Morgan for two reasons: She’s mad at her boyfriend and she’s doing a research paper on human behavior (certain to achieve a very low grade). She finds humans incomprehensible, making well-meaning but disastrous attempts to help the increasingly fed-up Morgan, who is a pretty together teen with the usual problems with boys and making friends at her new school. Alternating chapters in an extremely ornate font are excerpted from the totally clueless Gretta’s diary. Her version of events reveals a staggering lack of understanding of the events she creates via failed spells. Despite Gretta’s well-meaning attempts to help her charge, it is sensible Morgan who prevails. A much-needed glossary at the back defines some of the colorful and consistently used fairy slang. (Fantasy. 8-11)
Pub Date: Dec. 31, 2007
ISBN: 978-0-8234-2078-0
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Holiday House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2007
Categories: CHILDREN'S SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY
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BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Roz, a robot who learned to adapt to life among wild creatures in her first outing, seeks to return to the island she calls home.
Brown’s sequel to The Wild Robot (2016) continues an intriguing premise: What would happen to a robot after challenges in an unexpected environment cause it to evolve in unusual ways? As this book opens, Roz is delivered to a farm where she helps a widower with two young children run a dairy operation that has been in his family for generations. Roz reveals her backstory to the cows, who are supportive of the robot’s determination to return to the island and to her adopted son, the goose Brightbill. The cows, the children, and finally Brightbill himself come to Roz’s aid. The focus on Roz’s escape from human control results in a somewhat solemn and episodic narrative, with an extended journey and chase after Roz leaves the farm. Dr. Molovo, a literal deus ex machina, appears near the end of the story to provide a means of rescue. She is Roz’s designer/creator, and, intrigued by the robot’s adaptation and evolution but cognizant of the threat that those achievements might represent to humans, she assists Roz and Brightbill in their quest. The satisfactory (if inevitable-feeling) conclusion may prompt discussion about individual agency and determination, whether for robots or people.
If not as effervescent as Roz’s first outing, it is still a provocatively contemplative one. (Fiction. 8-11)Pub Date: March 13, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-316-38204-5
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2018
Categories: CHILDREN'S ANIMALS | CHILDREN'S SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY
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At a time when death has become an acceptable, even voguish subject in children's fiction, Natalie Babbitt comes through with a stylistic gem about living forever.
Protected Winnie, the ten-year-old heroine, is not immortal, but when she comes upon young Jesse Tuck drinking from a secret spring in her parents' woods, she finds herself involved with a family who, having innocently drunk the same water some 87 years earlier, haven't aged a moment since. Though the mood is delicate, there is no lack of action, with the Tucks (previously suspected of witchcraft) now pursued for kidnapping Winnie; Mae Tuck, the middle aged mother, striking and killing a stranger who is onto their secret and would sell the water; and Winnie taking Mae's place in prison so that the Tucks can get away before she is hanged from the neck until....? Though Babbitt makes the family a sad one, most of their reasons for discontent are circumstantial and there isn't a great deal of wisdom to be gleaned from their fate or Winnie's decision not to share it.
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1975
ISBN: 0312369816
Page Count: 164
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: April 13, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1975
Categories: CHILDREN'S SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY | CHILDREN'S SOCIAL THEMES
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