A joyous celebration of cryptozoology, friendship, family love, and coping with loss.
“My mom always says I can take any lemons that life gives me and make lemonade,” proclaims 10-year-old Lemonade Liberty Witt—“Lem” for short.
But when the red-haired, freckled white girl unexpectedly moves from San Francisco to tiny, wooded Willow Creek, California, after her mother’s death, she encounters a range of surprises—from a grandfather that she never knew before to a local legendary Bigfoot mystery. Soon she teams up with 10-year-old Tobin Sky, Bigfoot detective, a white boy whose father is missing in action in Vietnam. Together they are swept up into investigating Bigfoot sightings and reveling in the simple joys of life. Eventually Lem needs to make serious choices about her future, while Tobin must face unusual trials of his own. Lemonade narrates her experience, and debut author Savage skillfully places key trusted adults in the story to impart wisdom about grief, relationship challenges, and primate anatomy. While a couple of plot points strain credulity and the messaging gets a little heavy-handed toward the end, engaging characters and sensitive use of repetition make this an enjoyable and comforting middle-grade handbook on navigating new experiences and the heartache of losing loved ones early in life.
A joyous celebration of cryptozoology, friendship, family love, and coping with loss. (Historical fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: May 2, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-5247-0012-6
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: March 5, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2017
Eminently readable and appealing; will tug at dog-loving readers’ heartstrings.
A loquacious, lovable dog narrates the challenges of shelter life as he longs for a home.
Friendly three-legged Chance is the perfect guide to Dogtown, a shelter that houses both warmblooded and robot dogs. In fact, she’s “Management’s lucky charm,” roaming freely without being confined to a cage and leaving kibble for her mouse friend. Life is pretty good. But she still yearns for reunification with her family and, like many of the living pups, harbors suspicion of her robot counterparts, who are convenient and more easily adoptable but lacking in personality. When Metal Head, an oddly engineered e-dog, bonds with a child during a shelter reading program, Chance’s assumptions about heartless robot dogs are upended. As Chance connects with Metal Head, the two make a brief escape into the wider world, and Chance learns a familiar lesson: Everyone longs for a place to belong. Memories of Chance’s happy home loom large in her mind: Easy days with the Bessers, a sweet Black family, were disrupted by a neglectful dogsitter, the accident that cost Chance her leg, and Chance’s flight in search of safety. Chance’s chatty narrative style includes flashbacks, vignettes about fellow shelter pets, and thoughtful observations, for example, about the “boohoos,” or sad new arrivals. The story offers many moments of laughter and reflection, all greatly enhanced by West’s utterly charming grayscale illustrations of irresistible pooches.
Eminently readable and appealing; will tug at dog-loving readers’ heartstrings. (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Sept. 19, 2023
ISBN: 9781250811608
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Feiwel & Friends
Review Posted Online: July 13, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2023
Quirky and imaginative—postmodern storytelling at its best.
Friendly curiosity and a gift for naming earn a polar bear an assortment of (mostly animal) friends, adventures, mishaps, and discoveries.
Arriving at a northern ocean, Duane spies a shipwreck. Swimming out to investigate, he meets its lone occupant, C.C., a learned snowy owl whose noble goal is acquiring knowledge to apply “toward the benefit of all.” Informing Duane that he’s a polar bear, she points out a nearby cave that might suit him—it even has a mattress. Adding furnishings from the wreck—the grandfather clock’s handless, but who needs to tell time when it’s always now?—he meets a self-involved musk ox, entranced by his own reflection, who’s delighted when Duane names him “Handsome.” As he comes to understand, then appreciate their considerable diversity, Duane brings out the best in his new friends. C.C., who has difficulty reading emotions and dislikes being touched, evokes the autism spectrum. Magic, a bouncy, impulsive arctic fox, manifests ADHD. Major Puff, whose proud puffin ancestry involves courageous retreats from danger, finds a perfect companion in Twitch, a risk-aware, common-sensical hare. As illustrated, Sun Girl, a human child, appears vaguely Native, and Squint, a painter, white, but they’re sui generis: The Canadian author avoids referencing human culture. The art conveys warmth in an icy setting; animal characters suggest beloved stuffed toys, gently reinforcing the message that friendship founded on tolerance breeds comfort and safety.
Quirky and imaginative—postmodern storytelling at its best. (Animal fantasy. 8-12)Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5344-3341-0
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Atheneum
Review Posted Online: May 7, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2019
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