The belabored parental conflict, sugarcoated emotions and convenient plot details are cloying. The 12 recipes at the end are...
Can 10-year-old Poppy convince her parents she wants to be a baker and not a witch in yet another fantasy that blends magic and baking?
Poppy Pendle has inherited her magic from her Great-Granny Mabel, but her passion is baking. Her Dursley-like parents send her to the Ruthersfield Academy for young ladies with magic. She excels there, but she hates flying on her broomstick, using her wand and the teasing of the other girls. She runs away to the only place where she is happy, Patisserie Marie Claire, where she can create her own cookies and cakes. When this solution does not pan out, Poppy turns to the dark side of being a witch, hiding in a forsaken cottage and turning animals, her parents, police, birds and squirrels to stone. Her friend Charlie (a girl) and Marie Claire try various “sweet-tempting” plans to bring her back and finally succeed. Poppy and Marie Claire rehab the cottage and open a bakery. Numerous unexplained gaps in the fantasy logic crinkle the storyline, beginning with the “magic” of Poppy’s being born in the Patisserie (thus her passion) and ending with her turned-to-stone parents taking two years to thaw.
The belabored parental conflict, sugarcoated emotions and convenient plot details are cloying. The 12 recipes at the end are the best part; the rest is just half-baked. (Fantasy. 8-11)Pub Date: Sept. 4, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-4424-4679-3
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Paula Wiseman/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: July 17, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The journey is even gently funny—Omakayas’s brother spends much of the year with a porcupine on his head. Charming and...
This third entry in the Birchbark House series takes Omakayas and her family west from their home on the Island of the Golden-Breasted Woodpecker, away from land the U.S. government has claimed.
Difficulties abound; the unknown landscape is fraught with danger, and they are nearing hostile Bwaanag territory. Omakayas’s family is not only close, but growing: The travelers adopt two young chimookoman (white) orphans along the way. When treachery leaves them starving and alone in a northern Minnesota winter, it will take all of their abilities and love to survive. The heartwarming account of Omakayas’s year of travel explores her changing family relationships and culminates in her first moon, the onset of puberty. It would be understandable if this darkest-yet entry in Erdrich’s response to the Little House books were touched by bitterness, yet this gladdening story details Omakayas’s coming-of-age with appealing optimism.
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-06-029787-9
Page Count: 208
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2008
A fine emotional stretch within reach of the intended audience.
When siblings Jessie and Evan (The Lemonade War, 2007, and The Lemonade Crime, 2011) accompany their mother on the time-honored midwinter holiday visit to their grandmother’s home in the mountains, the changes are alarming.
Fire damage to the house and Grandma’s inability to recognize Evan are as disquieting as the disappearance of the iron bell, hung long ago by their grandmother on Lowell Hill and traditionally rung at the New Year. Davies keeps a tight focus on the children: Points of view switch between Evan, with his empathetic and emotional approach to understanding his world, and Jessie, for whom routine is essential and change a puzzle to be worked out. When Grandma ventures out into the snow just before twilight, it is Evan who realizes the danger and manages to find a way to rescue her. Jessie, determined to solve the mystery of the missing bell, enlists the help of Grandma's young neighbor Maxwell, with his unusual habitual gestures and his surprising ability to solve jigsaw puzzles. She is unprepared, however, for the terror of seeing the neighbor boys preparing a mechanical torture device to tear a live frog to pieces. Each of the siblings brings a personal resilience and heroism to the resolution.
A fine emotional stretch within reach of the intended audience. (Fiction. 8-11)Pub Date: May 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-547-56737-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: March 13, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
