More adventure than ordeal, this survival tale will fit the bill for thoughtful readers discomfited by extreme violence or gross details. To Michael, the round-the-world sail he’s taking with his parents aboard the 42-foot Peggy Sue is great fun, until the moment he and his dog Stella Artois are washed overboard. Michael comes to on a small island, inhabited by gibbons, a colony of orangutans—and Kensuke, a Japanese naval doctor stranded there more than 40 years before. The plot centers around Michael’s emotional ups and down as he battles loneliness and mosquitoes, then grows closer to his rescuer, who supplies him with food and water, but makes him stay on one end of the island, at least until he’s stung by a jellyfish, and needs nursing back to health. Kensuke has built a small, beautiful world for himself that he teaches Michael to see, and to paint, in exchange for English lessons and news of the outside. When Michael’s steadfast parents arrive, after nearly a year’s searching, to carry him and Stella away, Kensuke opts to stay behind—but it’s plain that his spirit and simplicity have worked profound changes on his young charge. A prizewinning import: sensitive, perceptive, and well-told. (Fiction. 10-12)
Pub Date: March 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-439-38202-5
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2003
In this tongue-in-cheek quest tale, Hirsch (Antonio S and the Mystery of Theodore Guzman, 2001) suggests that imperious Queens and intrepid Explorers both might have a thing or two to learn. Having tasted everything else delicious in her multiple kingdoms save the fabled melidrop fruit, a young Queen dispatches scruffy but resourceful Bartlett and his oversized companion Jacques Le Grand to fetch one. At first, Bartlett doesn’t think it’s going to be much of an adventure, but challenges await—not least the twin facts that the nearest melidrops are months away by sea, and that they rot a day after being picked—that will test every ounce of his Invention, Desperation, and Perseverance. As a flash of inspiration sends Bartlett on a side trip in search of an iceberg small enough to tow but big enough not to melt, back in the palace the Queen’s impatience reaches fever pitch—but, as she eventually comes to realize, there are some things that royal desires, royal demands, even royal tantrums, just can’t hurry along. In the end, she gets her melidrop (the iceberg turns out to be just big enough), Bartlett proclaims his adventure a satisfying one, and both (along with readers) come away a bit wiser. Small, delicately detailed illustrations reflect the episode’s light tone. (Fiction. 10-12)
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2003
ISBN: 1-58234-797-2
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2002
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
In faux blog posts, a young resident of Tenochtitlán describes his training at a military school, confused melees with bands of warriors from rival cities and the portent-ridden arrival of Cortés. Considering himself more priest than warrior material (those being the two choices available), Yoatl chronicles his unhappiness as in various misadventures he inadvertently captures an enemy lad, then helps him escape being bloodily sacrificed and goes on to become a captive himself before falling in with the strange and duplicitous Spaniards. Side panels (“hyperlinked” to his narrative) offer encyclopedia-style entries on his culture’s theology and general customs—all accompanied by an undifferentiated blend of new illustrations and unsourced period art. Readers will be left with a clear sense of that culture’s pervasive fatalism but only vague notions about how the Aztecs lived their daily lives. A participant in the 1212 Children’s Crusade supplies a similarly hybridized report in Kids at the Crossroads: Crusades, illustrated by John Mantha (ISBN: 978-1-55451-147-1, paper: 978-1-55451-146-4). Both volumes try for too much and end up offering neither a properly developed story line nor a coherent picture of their narrators’ historical contexts. (Infofiction. 10-12)
Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2009
ISBN: 978-1-55451-177-8
Page Count: 80
Publisher: Annick Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2009
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