An ambitious and mostly successful tale about stories and their essential role in creating connection.
Fifth-grader Alice Dingwell believes it is her fault her father has gone away, and she struggles to find her footing in her changed life.
When Alice was a young child, she followed a silken strand of thread to a giant web in the forest. Her father, Buzz, a hockey hero in their depressed Maine mill town, told her it was a Story Web, an essential part of the Earth’s well-being. Now, five years later, Alice’s father has checked himself into a psychiatric hospital after serving in Afghanistan, and Alice’s only connection with him is through his letters, which wander in and out of reality. Alice’s guilt over her perceived role in her father’s unraveling propels her to shrink from life, keeping others at a distance and quitting the hockey team. But when forest animals begin showing up in town and seem to specifically seek Alice out, she wonders if the Story Web is in danger and, reluctantly at first, begins to seek answers. Blakemore’s ambitious tale, like her fine and original web premise, is filled with many adjunct threads. Most weave together strongly, but some feel underdeveloped. That said, the story’s essential theme—the importance of trust and connection in the health of a community—is an important one in this divisive time. Alice is white, and the rest of the community seems to be white as well.
An ambitious and mostly successful tale about stories and their essential role in creating connection. (Fantasy. 8-11)Pub Date: June 4, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-68119-525-4
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: March 11, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Fans of unbridled, melodramatic tomfoolery will be over the moon.
A taste of poisoned soup spurs the Queen of the Moon and her feline companion into embarking on a quest for a curative fruit from the orbiting orb’s only golden glumpfoozle tree.
In further exploits attended by the monosyllabic, spacesuit-clad titular feline (“Meow”), Harris and Barnett bring back the cast of The First Cat in Space Ate Pizza (2022), from diaper-wearing buccaneer Captain Babybeard to computerized toenail clipper LOZ 4000, for a lunar ramble past a pair of mysterious killbots, Psychic Flying Eyeballs of Death, and other hazards. Depicted in rolling arrays of changing palettes and panel sizes and led by the opalescent Queen of the Moon—who, ignoring her loudly rumbling tummy, stoutly declares that “my reign will not be cut short by soup”—the expedition fetches up at last on the edge of a bottomless crater for a last-minute save, appropriately over-the-top grandstanding by a familiar AI with futile protagonistic ambitions (“How many pages did I get this time? 73?”), and a closing celebratory soupfest, depicted Last Supper–style by a vermiform da Vinci. This volume continues the nonstop madcap fun; returning readers will not be disappointed, and new ones will quickly become avid followers of the world’s first feline astronaut.
Fans of unbridled, melodramatic tomfoolery will be over the moon. (Graphic science fiction. 8-11)Pub Date: Oct. 3, 2023
ISBN: 9780063084117
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Katherine Tegen/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 26, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Ironically, by choosing such a dramatic catalyst, the author weakens the adventure’s impact overall and leaves readers to...
A group of talking farm animals catches wind of the farm owner’s intention to burn the barn (with them in it) for insurance money and hatches a plan to flee.
Bond begins briskly—within the first 10 pages, barn cat Burdock has overheard Dewey Baxter’s nefarious plan, and by Page 17, all of the farm animals have been introduced and Burdock is sharing the terrifying news. Grady, Dewey’s (ever-so-slightly) more principled brother, refuses to go along, but instead of standing his ground, he simply disappears. This leaves the animals to fend for themselves. They do so by relying on their individual strengths and one another. Their talents and personalities match their species, bringing an element of realism to balance the fantasy elements. However, nothing can truly compensate for the bland horror of the premise. Not the growing sense of family among the animals, the serendipitous intervention of an unknown inhabitant of the barn, nor the convenient discovery of an alternate home. Meanwhile, Bond’s black-and-white drawings, justly compared to those of Garth Williams, amplify the sense of dissonance. Charming vignettes and single- and double-page illustrations create a pastoral world into which the threat of large-scale violence comes as a shock.
Ironically, by choosing such a dramatic catalyst, the author weakens the adventure’s impact overall and leaves readers to ponder the awkward coincidences that propel the plot. (Animal fantasy. 8-10)Pub Date: July 7, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-544-33217-1
Page Count: 256
Publisher: HMH Books
Review Posted Online: March 31, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2015
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