It’s 1859 and Gilly (Mary Gillian) Bucket, 11, must leave Missouri to live with her cold and formal aunt in Virginia. The Virginia family holds slaves and Gilly has been raised to shun human bondage. Gilly’s cousin, her only sympathetic relative, is engaged to a neighbor, a yankee who is handsome, charming, and a successful scientific farmer who does not own slaves. But mysteries abound: What is that light in her aunt’s herb room? Does her New Yorker neighbor help slaves escape? Gilly embodies a maelstrom of emotions, struggling to work out a way to find her father who is searching for gold in the faraway Rockies after losing the family money as well as to come to grips with the reality of the life of the slaves and the suspicious activity she sometimes encounters. All is not what it seems, however, and the surprises that life holds will be obvious to some readers, but satisfying nonetheless. Stuffing the plot with information about life during this period, it sometimes seems that Dahlberg (Play to the Angel, 2000) wrote the story only to support the details. Still, Gilly is a spirited character, and despite the Hollywood ending, there are small satisfactions in her tale. (Historical fiction. 11-13)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 2002
ISBN: 0-374-31677-5
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2002
Categories: CHILDREN'S HISTORICAL FICTION
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Two young people of different generations get profound lessons in the tragic, enduring legacy of war.
Raised on the thrilling yarns of his great-grandpa Jacob and obsessed with both World War II and first-person–shooter video games, Trevor is eager to join the 93-year-old vet when he is invited to revisit the French town his unit had helped to liberate. In alternating chapters, the overseas trip retraces the parallel journeys of two young people—Trevor, 12, and Jacob, in 1944, just five years older—with similarly idealized visions of what war is like as they travel both then and now from Fort Benning to Omaha Beach and then through Normandy. Jacob’s wartime experiences are an absorbing whirl of hard fighting, sudden death, and courageous acts spurred by necessity…but the modern trip turns suspenseful too, as mysterious stalkers leave unsettling tokens and a series of hostile online posts that hint that Jacob doesn’t have just German blood on his hands. Korman acknowledges the widely held view of World War II as a just war but makes his own sympathies plain by repeatedly pointing to the unavoidable price of conflict: “Wars may have winning sides, but everybody loses.” Readers anticipating a heavy-handed moral will appreciate that Trevor arrives at a refreshingly realistic appreciation of video games’ pleasures and limitations. As his dad puts it: “War makes a better video game….But if you’re looking for a way to live, I’ll take peace every time.”
This weave of perceptive, well-told tales wears its agenda with unusual grace. (Fiction/historical fiction. 11-13)Pub Date: July 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-338-29020-2
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: April 8, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2020
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An ancient inscription and a handful of inscrutable artifacts plunge three young people into both the War of 1812 and a much larger, older conflict.
Opening in Baltimore then moving on to the not-entirely-earthly town of Nagspeake (setting, in another era, of Milford’s Greenglass House, 2014), the tale centers on staid, methodical “natural philosopher” Max Ault; 12-year-old American naval officer Oliver Dexter; and fiery Lucy Bluecrowne, daughter of a renowned British privateer, captain of the titular ship. It pits them against both relentless French pursuers and mysterious men in black with eldritch abilities. The prize is a three-part device made thousands of years ago and said to be able to stop war…a superweapon, or so everyone (nearly everyone) presumes. Along with being replete with rousing chases, races, and violent explosions, the tale is uncommonly rich in memorable characters, from the central three, who all display stout hearts and hidden depths, to Lucy’s 9-year-old half brother, part-Chinese Liao: pacifist, expert lockpick, and fireworks genius extraordinaire. The labyrinthine Nagspeake itself is magical and vivid enough to serve as more than just a setting (and deservedly sports a metafictional website). Wheeler’s neatly turned monochromes capture the tale’s warmth and wonder, though (at least as she depicts it) the cast appears to be white, excepting Liao.
Rich and strange of place and premise; suspenseful and thought-provoking. (Fantasy. 11-13)Pub Date: Aug. 23, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8050-9800-6
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: May 18, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2016
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