A touching chronicle of people and animals bonding with and helping each other.
Animal rescuers save horses, pigs, and other critters in Sobolewski’s heartfelt middle-grade novel.
Animal rescuer Mel, her daughter, Lennon, her live-in handyman, Slick, and his daughter, June, collect abused and abandoned animals and bring them back to Mel’s California ranch, adopting some and placing the rest in other permanent homes. The beasts-in-distress include Slick’s horse, Hickory, who’s extracted from a forest fire; a pig named Love, who’s dredged out of the muck of a Nebraska hog farm after he’s injured in a flood (the farmer complains that the rescuers are actually stealing him); a pair of fly-infested alpacas with an ornery habit of spitting at anyone who approaches (Lennon poetically christens them Allen Ginsberg and Charles Bukowski); a husky dog found hungry and panic-stricken beside his owner’s corpse; and a calf named Norman, whom Mel whisks off to a team of veterinarians when he comes down with diarrhea. This first installment of the author’s Moonlight Mile Ranch series fictionalizes her real-life family’s zoological exploits and paints a vivid portrait of the animal-rescue scene, with its gung-ho network of scouts, rescue teams, foster farms, and adopters, all passionately committed to animals’ well-being in quirkily inspired ways (“Dr. Easton made a ramp out of two large animal stretchers and lined it with strawberries and Cheerios. About 15 minutes later, they all saw the pig limp down the ramp, eating treats along the way”). Throughout the narrative, Sobolewski gently soapboxes for animal rights and autonomy: “Morally, I don’t understand your business at all,” Mel tells a dairy worker. “I believe in allowing all animals to live with dignity and security, without having to produce anything in return.” Pitched at a middle-grade readership, Sobolewski’s prose is limpid and matter-of-fact, with wonderfully evocative renderings of animals’ lives and struggles. Young animal-lovers will be captivated.
A touching chronicle of people and animals bonding with and helping each other.Pub Date: May 19, 2023
ISBN: 9798987129692
Page Count: 191
Publisher: All Things That Matter Press
Review Posted Online: Oct. 31, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Readers can still rely on this series to bring laughs.
The Heffley family’s house undergoes a disastrous attempt at home improvement.
When Great Aunt Reba dies, she leaves some money to the family. Greg’s mom calls a family meeting to determine what to do with their share, proposing home improvements and then overruling the family’s cartoonish wish lists and instead pushing for an addition to the kitchen. Before bringing in the construction crew, the Heffleys attempt to do minor maintenance and repairs themselves—during which Greg fails at the work in various slapstick scenes. Once the professionals are brought in, the problems keep getting worse: angry neighbors, terrifying problems in walls, and—most serious—civil permitting issues that put the kibosh on what work’s been done. Left with only enough inheritance to patch and repair the exterior of the house—and with the school’s dismal standardized test scores as a final straw—Greg’s mom steers the family toward moving, opening up house-hunting and house-selling storylines (and devastating loyal Rowley, who doesn’t want to lose his best friend). While Greg’s positive about the move, he’s not completely uncaring about Rowley’s action. (And of course, Greg himself is not as unaffected as he wishes.) The gags include effectively placed callbacks to seemingly incidental events (the “stress lizard” brought in on testing day is particularly funny) and a lampoon of after-school-special–style problem books. Just when it seems that the Heffleys really will move, a new sequence of chaotic trouble and property destruction heralds a return to the status quo. Whew.
Readers can still rely on this series to bring laughs. (Graphic/fiction hybrid. 8-12)Pub Date: Nov. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4197-3903-3
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Amulet/Abrams
Review Posted Online: Nov. 18, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
Hugely entertaining, timely, and triumphant.
Robot Roz undertakes an unusual ocean journey to save her adopted island home in this third series entry.
When a poison tide flowing across the ocean threatens their island, Roz works with the resident creatures to ensure that they will have clean water, but the destruction of vegetation and crowding of habitats jeopardize everyone’s survival. Brown’s tale of environmental depredation and turmoil is by turns poignant, graceful, endearing, and inspiring, with his (mostly) gentle robot protagonist at its heart. Though Roz is different from the creatures she lives with or encounters—including her son, Brightbill the goose, and his new mate, Glimmerwing—she makes connections through her versatile communication abilities and her desire to understand and help others. When Roz accidentally discovers that the replacement body given to her by Dr. Molovo is waterproof, she sets out to seek help and discovers the human-engineered source of the toxic tide. Brown’s rich descriptions of undersea landscapes, entertaining conversations between Roz and wild creatures, and concise yet powerful explanations of the effect of the poison tide on the ecology of the island are superb. Simple, spare illustrations offer just enough glimpses of Roz and her surroundings to spark the imagination. The climactic confrontation pits oceangoing mammals, seabirds, fish, and even zooplankton against hardware and technology in a nicely choreographed battle. But it is Roz’s heroism and peacemaking that save the day.
Hugely entertaining, timely, and triumphant. (author’s note) (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Sept. 26, 2023
ISBN: 9780316669412
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 26, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2023
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