Exciting, tender, and absolutely wonderful.
Twelve-year-old Jake has great expectations for another wonderful summer on Dewees Island, a private island and nature sanctuary in South Carolina, in this follow-up to The Islanders (2021).
Jake wants to reunite with his friends Lovie and Macon and have a new adventure. Most of all he hopes his ex-Army father will be able to heal from his injuries; Dad has become emotionally withdrawn and refuses help. Jake’s friends, grandmother Honey, and Fire Chief Rand, his father’s childhood friend, are all waiting to greet them with hugs. During a quick visit to Honey’s newly modernized nature center, the kids spot a newspaper article that supplies their next adventure: hunting for Blackbeard’s treasure. A metal detector, research help from Honey, and memories from Rand and Dad set them on their way. There are adventures galore, encounters with a mysterious local treasure hunter, and lots of laughter (and some tears) in the changing relationship dynamics between Jake, his dad, and his friends. Two boys, cousins from the city with bad attitudes whose actions cause danger to protected animals, are an ongoing menace. The authors keep the action moving at a rapid pace, filling the pages with vivid sensory descriptions while masterfully interweaving historical facts, wildlife information, and gentle lessons. Jake’s first-person narration allows for self-knowledge and self-doubt while demonstrating capability for insight and compassion. Scattered black-and-white sketches illuminate the activities. Most characters present White; Macon is Black.
Exciting, tender, and absolutely wonderful. (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: June 14, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-5344-2730-3
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Aladdin
Review Posted Online: March 28, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
The three way chats, in which they are joined by other animals, about web spinning, themselves, other humans—are as often...
A successful juvenile by the beloved New Yorker writer portrays a farm episode with an imaginative twist that makes a poignant, humorous story of a pig, a spider and a little girl.
Young Fern Arable pleads for the life of runt piglet Wilbur and gets her father to sell him to a neighbor, Mr. Zuckerman. Daily, Fern visits the Zuckermans to sit and muse with Wilbur and with the clever pen spider Charlotte, who befriends him when he is lonely and downcast. At the news of Wilbur's forthcoming slaughter, campaigning Charlotte, to the astonishment of people for miles around, spins words in her web. "Some Pig" comes first. Then "Terrific"—then "Radiant". The last word, when Wilbur is about to win a show prize and Charlotte is about to die from building her egg sac, is "Humble". And as the wonderful Charlotte does die, the sadness is tempered by the promise of more spiders next spring.
The three way chats, in which they are joined by other animals, about web spinning, themselves, other humans—are as often informative as amusing, and the whole tenor of appealing wit and pathos will make fine entertainment for reading aloud, too.Pub Date: Oct. 15, 1952
ISBN: 978-0-06-026385-0
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1952
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
However the compelling fitness of theme and event and the apt but unexpected imagery (the opening sentences compare the...
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
SEEN & HEARD
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