A fun, fast-paced read that will please zany young readers.
In this middle-grade novel, a bookish young girl finds herself plagued with anxiety when her troublemaking grandfather decides to build the world’s smallest passenger plane.
Twelve-year-old Winsley Walker is constantly worrying about her family’s zany antics, which are infamous in the small town of Cross Lanes, West Virginia. Her younger brother, Billy, is constantly getting into mischief at school, and her grandparents, who live next door, don’t exactly provide a calming influence. Her Gramps is the kind of person who drives a flashy turquoise Thunderbird and steals rosebushes from the local cemetery for a Mother’s Day present; after all, “Don’t reckon dead bodies out at Our Eternal Life are going to be getting a whiff of anything, except their own stinkin’ decaying bodies.” By contrast, Winsley prefers to spend her days quietly plowing through piles of books from the local mobile library. When a “You Can Build Anything” catalog arrives in the mail, Gramps determines to build the world’s smallest passenger plane and use it to finally achieve fame and fortune. Winsley develops an anxiety-induced twitch at the thought; she’s willing to do almost anything to thwart his plans so that the whole family doesn’t get kicked out of West Virginia. Debut author Craddock, drawing from her own childhood memories, brings to life a colorful and quirky cast of characters: Stubborn dreamer Gramps and tough, moonshine-swilling Granny are both family members whom many an adventurous child would love to have next door. It’s a shame that the least likable and interesting of the bunch is Winsley herself. Her devotion to respectability and responsibility is so total that she feels less like a preteen girl and more like a wet blanket. At one point she even goes so far as to turn away a delivery of plane-building supplies by telling the deliveryman that Gramps died from choking on a chicken bone. Fortunately, the supporting characters provide enough fun to compensate for her excessive seriousness and help the novel reach a thoroughly satisfying conclusion.
A fun, fast-paced read that will please zany young readers.Pub Date: Aug. 6, 2014
ISBN: 978-1500750527
Page Count: 196
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Nov. 20, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Broccoli: No way is James going to eat broccoli. “It’s disgusting,” says James. Well then, James, says his father, let’s consider the alternatives: some wormy dirt, perhaps, some stinky socks, some pre-chewed gum? James reconsiders the broccoli, but—milk? “Blech,” says James. Right, says his father, who needs strong bones? You’ll be great at hide-and-seek, though not so great at baseball and kickball and even tickling the dog’s belly. James takes a mouthful. So it goes through lumpy oatmeal, mushroom lasagna and slimy eggs, with James’ father parrying his son’s every picky thrust. And it is fun, because the father’s retorts are so outlandish: the lasagna-making troll in the basement who will be sent back to the rat circus, there to endure the rodent’s vicious bites; the uneaten oatmeal that will grow and grow and probably devour the dog that the boy won’t be able to tickle any longer since his bones are so rubbery. Schneider’s watercolors catch the mood of gentle ribbing, the looks of bewilderment and surrender and the deadpanned malarkey. It all makes James’ father’s last urging—“I was just going to say that you might like them if you tried them”—wholly fresh and unexpected advice. (Early reader. 5-9)
Pub Date: May 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-547-14956-1
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Clarion Books
Review Posted Online: April 4, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The seemingly ageless Seeger brings back his renowned giant for another go in a tuneful tale that, like the art, is a bit sketchy, but chockful of worthy messages. Faced with yearly floods and droughts since they’ve cut down all their trees, the townsfolk decide to build a dam—but the project is stymied by a boulder that is too huge to move. Call on Abiyoyo, suggests the granddaughter of the man with the magic wand, then just “Zoop Zoop” him away again. But the rock that Abiyoyo obligingly flings aside smashes the wand. How to avoid Abiyoyo’s destruction now? Sing the monster to sleep, then make it a peaceful, tree-planting member of the community, of course. Seeger sums it up in a postscript: “every community must learn to manage its giants.” Hays, who illustrated the original (1986), creates colorful, if unfinished-looking, scenes featuring a notably multicultural human cast and a towering Cubist fantasy of a giant. The song, based on a Xhosa lullaby, still has that hard-to-resist sing-along potential, and the themes of waging peace, collective action, and the benefits of sound ecological practices are presented in ways that children will both appreciate and enjoy. (Picture book. 5-9)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-689-83271-0
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2001
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