Poor little rich children, 1903-style: When Father inherits Uncle Harry's fortune and Fifth Avenue mansion, he moves his children from their farm near Albany, where they've been allowed to run free, to New York, where he's preoccupied with angling for a partnership in a prestigious law firm. Mother, who also has new social responsibilities, hires a ``nurse,'' a humorless martinet who does her best to squelch any creativity with demands for order and cleanliness. Finding a concealed attic room, Freddie and Katherine channel their natural ebullience into furnishing it with items ``borrowed'' downstairs (causing consternation, since some are valuable) and acquire some wild pets: a rabbit, a mouse. Although the many period details (especially of the opulent turn-of-the-century lifestyle and the children's regimentation) are well integrated, the story is overlong—the incidents establishing the situation and Miss Pritt's disagreeable character grow repetitious. Still, there are some entertaining scenes (notably one with the kids under a dinner-party table); and, to first novelist Yektai's credit, the inevitable discovery of the room leads to deserved blame as well as some healthy, and loving, restructuring of the family arrangements, all nicely presaged—especially by Mother's unfashionable assertiveness and her unhappiness with being denied access to her own children. (Fiction. 9-12)
Pub Date: Sept. 18, 1992
ISBN: 0-531-05456-X
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Orchard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1992
Though usually cast as the trickster, Coyote is more victim than victimizer, making this a nice complement to other Coyote...
Two republished tales by a Greco-Cherokee author feature both folkloric and modern elements as well as new illustrations.
One of the two has never been offered south of the (Canadian) border. In “Coyote Sings to the Moon,” the doo-wop hymn sung nightly by Old Woman and all the animals except tone-deaf Coyote isn’t enough to keep Moon from hiding out at the bottom of the lake—until she is finally driven forth by Coyote’s awful wailing. She has been trying to return to the lake ever since, but that piercing howl keeps her in the sky. In “Coyote’s New Suit” he is schooled in trickery by Raven, who convinces him to steal the pelts of all the other animals while they’re bathing, sends the bare animals to take clothes from the humans’ clothesline, and then sets the stage for a ruckus by suggesting that Coyote could make space in his overcrowded closet by having a yard sale. No violence ensues, but from then to now humans and animals have not spoken to one another. In Eggenschwiler’s monochrome scenes Coyote and the rest stand on hind legs and (when stripped bare) sport human limbs. Old Woman might be Native American; the only other completely human figure is a pale-skinned girl.
Though usually cast as the trickster, Coyote is more victim than victimizer, making this a nice complement to other Coyote tales. (Fiction. 9-11)Pub Date: Oct. 3, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-55498-833-4
Page Count: 56
Publisher: Groundwood
Review Posted Online: July 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2017
After his grandmother gives him an old riding lawnmower for his summer birthday, this comedy’s 12-year-old narrator putt-putts into a series of increasingly complex and economically advantageous adventures. As each lawn job begets another, one client—persuasive day-trader Arnold Howell—barters market investing and dubious local business connections. Our naïve entrepreneur thus unwittingly acquires stock in an Internet start-up and a coffin company; a capable landscaping staff of 15 and the sponsorship of a hulking boxer named Joseph Powdermilk. There’s a semi-climactic scuffle with some bad guys bent on appropriating the lawn business, but Joey Pow easily dispatches them. If there’s tension here, it derives from the unremitting good news: While the reader may worry that Arnold’s a rip-off artist, Joey Pow will blow his fight, or (at the very least) the parents will go ballistic once clued in—all ends refreshingly well. The most complicated parts of this breezy affair are the chapter titles, which seem lifted from an officious, tenure-track academician’s economics text. Capital! (Fiction. 9-12)
Pub Date: June 12, 2007
ISBN: 978-0-385-74686-1
Page Count: 96
Publisher: Wendy Lamb/Random
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2007
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