The legendary archer inspires a worthy daughter in a lightweight fantasy. Thirteen-year-old Rosemary lives content until her wood-wife mother is murdered as a witch. Disguised as a boy, Rowan, she sets off in search of Robin Hood, the father she never knew. After running afoul of the villainous Guy of Gisborn, she gains an assortment of misfit companions—Tykell, a half-breed wolf-dog; Lionel, a petulant giant minstrel; and Ettarde, a runaway princess—and the enigmatic assistance of her elfin kinfolk. Robin himself turns out to be both her heart’s desire and a disappointment; he offers Ro a place in his band, but fails to recognize her as his child, and she is simultaneously daunted and repelled by the outlaw life. While rejecting Robin’s methods, Ro and her friends still accomplish a daring rescue when he is captured; and the revelation of Ro’s parentage allows her to accept her heritage and her future. Springer, acclaimed for her Arthurian retellings (I Am Morgan Le Fay, p. 58, etc.), presents a sanitized Sherwood Forest, with minimal menace or discomfort. All violence occurs neatly offstage, and Ro’s mysterious conception is explained so elliptically as to elude most young readers. Springer’s pantheistic mysticism may baffle some, and her critique of hierarchical authority will undoubtedly sail over their heads. Still, if Robin is a one-dimensional wish fulfillment of the perfect father, Ro herself is an appealing heroine, both compassionate and strong; and her story will leave adventurous girls eager for the inevitable sequel. A pleasant trifle. (Fiction. 9-13)
Pub Date: May 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-399-23368-7
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Philomel
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2001
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
If it were a Golden Age comic, this tale of ridiculous science, space dogs and humanoid aliens with flashlights in their hands might not be bad. Alas... Number Four is a fugitive from the planet Lorien, which is sloppily described as both "hundreds of lightyears away" and "billions of miles away." Along with eight other children and their caretakers, Number Four escaped from the Mogadorian invasion of Lorien ten years ago. Now the nine children are scattered on Earth, hiding. Luckily and fairly nonsensically, the planet's Elders cast a charm on them so they could only be killed in numerical order, but children one through three are dead, and Number Four is next. Too bad he's finally gained a friend and a girlfriend and doesn't want to run. At least his newly developing alien powers means there will be screen-ready combat and explosions. Perhaps most idiotic, "author" Pittacus Lore is a character in this fiction—but the first-person narrator is someone else entirely. Maybe this is a natural extension of lightly hidden actual author James Frey's drive to fictionalize his life, but literature it ain't. (Science fiction. 11-13)
Pub Date: Aug. 17, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-06-196955-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2010
The poem/novel ends with only a trace of hope; there are no pat endings, but a glimpse of beauty wrought from brutal reality.
Billie Jo tells of her life in Oklahoma during the Dust Bowl: Her mother dies after a gruesome accident caused by her father's leaving a bucket of kerosene near the stove; Billie Jo is partially responsible—fully responsible in the eyes of the community—and sustains injuries that seem to bring to a halt her dreams of playing the piano.
Finding a way through her grief is not made easier by her taciturn father, who went on a drinking binge while Billie Joe's mother, not yet dead, begged for water. Told in free-verse poetry of dated entries that span the winter of 1934 to the winter of 1935, this is an unremittingly bleak portrait of one corner of Depression-era life. In Billie Jo, the only character who comes to life, Hesse (The Music of Dolphins, 1996, etc.) presents a hale and determined heroine who confronts unrelenting misery and begins to transcend it.
The poem/novel ends with only a trace of hope; there are no pat endings, but a glimpse of beauty wrought from brutal reality. (Fiction. 9-12)Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1997
ISBN: 978-0-590-36080-7
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1997
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