A well-illustrated story that makes a few missteps but features an appealing heroine.
In this middle-grade fantasy novel, a girl steps through a magic barrier into a new realm, where she tries to help creatures suffering from a drought.
Eleven-year-old Alicia loves nothing more than the summers she spends with her parents at their cabin near Cascade, Idaho. The lake is a great place for swimming, snorkeling, and observing nature—something that Alicia, who loves earth science, especially enjoys. One day, she and her father row across the lake, but their day is cut short by rain. Just as they’re about to leave, Alicia spies something strange out of the corner of her eye. When she stops trying to focus on it, “suddenly, startlingly, everything pop[s] into clarity” for the girl, who steps forward and finds herself in a new and different reality. As her father searches for her frantically back home, Alicia befriends talking animals in the new world—called the “Wild Side” by its inhabitants. Mickey, a squirrel, explains that the Wild Side is suffering from “The Drying,” a drought caused by Gran’Tree, a tree so enormous that his branches block the sun and his roots suck up all the water. With the help of her new friends, Alicia goes on a dangerous journey to Gran’Tree, hoping that she can convince him to open the barrier, send her home, and end the Drying. Illustrator Allen’s (Four Decades of Paintings & Poems, 2014, etc.) lovely, sensitive black-and-white images accompany the text well. Foster structures his debut novel along the archetypal lines of The Wizard of Oz, which also features a human girl, unusual companions, and a risky journey to ask favors of an all-powerful being. This novel lacks Oz author L. Frank Baum’s loony inventiveness, however. Still, Alicia does come across as an intelligent, science-minded heroine for the modern era, and the story has a fresh ecological focus. Some perplexing authorial choices work against this theme, however; foxes, who are necessary predators, are cast as “evil,” for example, and a tree—often an emblem of ecological balance—hardly seems appropriate as a selfish, resource-stealing villain.
A well-illustrated story that makes a few missteps but features an appealing heroine.Pub Date: Oct. 31, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-9965683-8-8
Page Count: 188
Publisher: Z Girls Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 19, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
Sisters in and out of love.
Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
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