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STRANGE ORBIT

Name: STRANGE ORBIT
Author: Margaret Simpson
ISBN: 0-7914-2629-7

by Margaret Simpson ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 1, 1995

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Jessica Baron is a smart and likeable British teen who leaps at the chance to join the crew of the first children's moon landing. Although Jessica frequently drops Anglicanisms (``beavering,'' ``fifteen stone,'') readers will find it easy to like her excitement and honesty. The entire enterprise, including the financing of the Apollo rocket, is paid for by the wealthy and of course eccentric Lady ``Mad'' Muriel Dumfries, who now wants to see the lunar surface up close. Even though the rest of the youthful crew includes a six-year-old, their preparation is rigorous: This is the most satisfying section of the novel, partly because Simpson has stuffed it full of facts and realistic scenarios drawn from NASA's astronaut training program. The usual last minute glitch threatens to scrap the missionMuriel's daughters try to have her declared crazybut the launch proceeds as planned. No sooner does the Adventurer reach orbit, however, than it's pulled off-course by a black hole, and shot 300 years into the future, to an Earth that has been ravaged by the depletion of its ozone layer. The plot metamorphoses from morality tale to spiritual primer: After travelling to Saturn's moon, Titan, the gang meets Yogi Shantih Baba, who explains that their experience has been a lesson in eternity, and then transports them back through time and space to the Earth's moon. This deus-ex-machina conclusion seems fitting for this unlikely, incredible adventure, which loses its excitement and any realism just when the fun should really begin. (Fiction. 11-14)

Pub Date: July 1, 1995

ISBN: 0-7914-2629-7

Page Count: 221

Publisher: N/A

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1995

Categories:

CHILDREN'S GENERAL CHILDREN'S

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DANIEL'S STORY

by Carol Matas ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 1, 1993

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After witnessing the rising tide of anti-Semitism in Nazi Germany, Daniel is suddenly transported, at age 14, from his comfortable life in Frankfurt to a Polish ghetto, then to Auschwitz and Buchenwald—losing most of his family along the way, seeing Nazi brutality of both the casual and the calculated kind, and recording atrocities with a smuggled camera (``What has happened to me?...Who am I? Where am I going?''). Matas, explicating an exhibit of photos and other materials at the new United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, creates a convincing composite youth and experience—fictional but carefully based on survivors' accounts. It's a savage story with no attempt to soften the culpability of the German people; Daniel's profound anger is easier to understand than is his father's compassion or his sister's plea to ``chose love. Always choose love.'' Daniel survives to be reunited, after the war, with his wife-to-be, but his dying friend's last word echoes beyond the happy ending: ``Remember...'' An unusual undertaking, effectively carried out. Chronology; glossary. (Fiction. 11-14)

Pub Date: April 1, 1993

ISBN: 0-590-46920-7

Page Count: 128

Publisher: Scholastic

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1993

Categories:

CHILDREN'S GENERAL CHILDREN'S

- BOOK REVIEW
Who Am I?
by Carol Matas

- BOOK REVIEW
THE EDGE OF WHEN
by Carol Matas

- BOOK REVIEW
THE WAR WITHIN
by Carol Matas

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JOEY PIGZA SWALLOWED THE KEY

From the Joey Pigza series , Vol. 1

by Jack Gantos ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 1, 1998

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If Rotten Ralph were a boy instead of a cat, he might be Joey, the hyperactive hero of Gantos's new book, except that Joey is never bad on purpose. In the first-person narration, it quickly becomes clear that he can't help himself; he's so wound up that he not only practically bounces off walls, he literally swallows his house key (which he wears on a string around his neck and which he pull back up, complete with souvenirs of the food he just ate). Gantos's straightforward view of what it's like to be Joey is so honest it hurts. Joey has been abandoned by his alcoholic father and, for a time, by his mother (who also drinks); his grandmother, just as hyperactive as he is, abuses Joey while he's in her care. One mishap after another leads Joey first from his regular classroom to special education classes and then to a special education school. With medication, counseling, and positive reinforcement, Joey calms down. Despite a lighthearted title and jacket painting, the story is simultaneously comic and horrific; Gantos takes readers right inside a human whirlwind where the ride is bumpy and often frightening, especially for Joey. But a river of compassion for the characters runs through the pages, not only for Joey but for his overextended mom and his usually patient, always worried (if only for their safety) teachers. Mature readers will find this harsh tale softened by unusual empathy and leavened by genuinely funny events. (Fiction. 11-13)