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WILDFLOWER GIRL

Name: WILDFLOWER GIRL
Author: Marita Conlon-McKenna
ISBN: 0-8234-0988-0

by Marita Conlon-McKenna & illustrated by Donald Teskey ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 15, 1992

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Peggy, who found refuge with her great-aunts during the Irish Potato Famine (Under the Hawthorn Tree, 1990), sets out on her own for America: her sister is to be married, and her brother has found a job, so only 13-year-old Peggy accepts the subsidized passage to Boston. A motherly neighbor provides some assistance during the grueling voyage in steerage, but is detained with cabin fever on arrival. Another friend helps Peggy find lodging with a kind but businesslike fellow immigrant who matches the newly arrived girls with jobs; Peggy's first employer is a horror, but with the second—despite the obliviousness of even a nice upstairs family to downstairs drudgery—she finds a precarious stability and hope for a better future. Here, the brief tenure of a stingy martinet of a housekeeper and the animosity of the family's spoiled teenage daughter provide some suspenseful episodes, but most of the events simply dramatize the Irish immigrant experience. Still, Peggy is likable, other characters are concisely but effectively drawn, and the picture of a young girl making her way in a new land is authentic. (Fiction. 10-15)

Pub Date: Oct. 15, 1992

ISBN: 0-8234-0988-0

Page Count: 174

Publisher: Holiday House

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1992

Categories:

CHILDREN'S HISTORICAL FICTION

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THE SEVENTH MOST IMPORTANT THING

by Shelley Pearsall ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 8, 2015

Luminescent, just like the artwork it celebrates. (Historical fiction. 10-14)

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Traumatized by his father’s recent death, a boy throws a brick at an old man who collects junk in his neighborhood and winds up on probation working for him.

Pearsall bases the book on a famed real work of folk art, the Throne of the Third Heaven, by James Hampton, a janitor who built his work in a garage in Washington, D.C., from bits of light bulbs, foil, mirrors, wood, bottles, coffee cans, and cardboard—the titular seven most important things. In late 1963, 13-year-old Arthur finds himself looking for junk for Mr. Hampton, who needs help with his artistic masterpiece, begun during World War II. The book focuses on redemption rather than art, as Hampton forgives the fictional Arthur for his crime, getting the boy to participate in his work at first reluctantly, later with love. Arthur struggles with his anger over his father’s death and his mother’s new boyfriend. Readers watch as Arthur transfers much of his love for his father to Mr. Hampton and accepts responsibility for saving the art when it becomes endangered. Written in a homespun style that reflects the simple components of the artwork, the story guides readers along with Arthur to an understanding of the most important things in life.

Luminescent, just like the artwork it celebrates. (Historical fiction. 10-14)