Families are complicated, but gardening usually isn’t.
When Chloë and her father move from Montreal to Victoria, Chloë doesn’t think it will be for forever. After all, her whole life is back in Montreal.
Her mom, her best friend, and her city neighborhood are all waiting for her to return, so she doesn’t feel she needs to work too hard to settle into the new place. But she does want to learn more about her grandfather, Uli. Her dad and Uli don’t get along well, and no matter how many times Chloë asks to be told why, her dad always puts her off. But when she starts spending time with Uli in his garden, where he grows seeds that have been given to him by many different people, she wants to know even more. Perhaps best known for her nonfiction, Mulder carefully crafts a book about family and vegetables that offers a glimpse into the ways in which gardening can become something more than simply growing plants. The scenes of Chloë and her grandfather are poignant and realistic and might even spark some agricultural interest in middle-graders. But the rather slow-burning narrative sometimes gets bogged down with internal reflection, and the slow reveal of plot points can occasionally feel stagnant. However, the characters (who are mostly white, as a friendly Japanese-Canadian neighbor points out) are warm, and the concept of seed vaults is made wonderfully personal.
Families are complicated, but gardening usually isn’t. (Fiction. 9-11)Pub Date: March 26, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4598-1679-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Orca
Review Posted Online: Nov. 25, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2018
Likely to be lost in the crowd, but comfy antics for readers who don't probably much like reading—which, one thinks, is...
Skye adds another Wimpy Kid to the growing bandwagon.
Sounding almost too nerdy to be true ("I'm kind of like a backup singer in the song of life"), 12-year-old Rob relates his tale in the now-requisite mix of block-print–type prose and line-drawn cartoon figures with punch lines or commentary in dialogue balloons. A string of hectic events follows the appearance of a manic mannequin from the midden of books and old science projects in his closet. He describes it as "a small, weird man who came up to just above my waist. He looked like two different people who had been smashed together." Comical chases, pranks, interactions with friends dependable and otherwise, mortifying mishaps in front of girls and like standard fare later, Rob has overcome severe stage fright to mend fences with classmate Janae and others by reciting a poem of apology at a school talent show. He has also been turned on to books by his discovery that the mannequin is an amalgam of Willy Wonka and Frankenstein's monster. In the end, Wonkenstein slips back into the closet—and out springs an even smaller Harry Potter/Chewbacca blend. Sequels, anyone?
Likely to be lost in the crowd, but comfy antics for readers who don't probably much like reading—which, one thinks, is exactly the point. (Fantasy. 9-11)Pub Date: Sept. 27, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-8050-9268-4
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Christy Ottaviano/Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: June 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2011
Though not yet born in 2001, the intended audience will come away feeling more connected to the tragedy and aware of its...
A terrified 11-year-old gets an “extremely loud and incredibly close” view of the World Trade Center attacks in this disaster series’ latest entry.
Thoroughly bummed at having to drop football in the wake of his third concussion, Lucas cuts school for the lower Manhattan firehouse where beloved “Uncle” Benny—his firefighter father’s colleague and closest friend—is stationed. He arrives just as the first plane does, and hearing that all firefighters have been summoned to the scene, he sets out to find Benny and his dad. Supplemented by occasional staid but realistic scenes from Dawson, Tarshis effectively captures not only the sequence of events and the pervasive confusion and shock as the catastrophe develops, but also its gargantuan scale. Though the author plays with readers' sympathies in the final chapter with a needless red herring, in general she crafts a dramatic, emotionally intense tale that takes account of 9/11’s physical and emotional costs—short- and long-term—while ending on an upward beat.
Though not yet born in 2001, the intended audience will come away feeling more connected to the tragedy and aware of its historical significance. (afterword, timeline) (Historical fiction. 9-11)Pub Date: July 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-545-20693-8
Page Count: 112
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: May 1, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2012
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