An uncomplicated first novel, set in turn-of-the-century South Dakota, about a teenager mad to go fossil-hunting. Despite her Bible-thumping father's sermons on a woman's proper place, Tabitha has managed successful, if surreptitous, rebellion; she can ride and shoot better than her brother and has a good grounding in the sciences. She sneaks off to a lecture by dinosaur hunter Phineas Parker and learns that he plans a nearby dig. He, too, spouts off about women's roles, so she persuades him to hire, sight unseen, her fictional twin ``Tom'' as a scout. Hill contorts the plot to make Tabitha's masquerade easy—her father leaves town as not one but two parties of fossil hunters arrive— and makes it even simpler to tell Good Guys from Bad; Parker is not only sexist, he's lazy, arrogant, flabby, and, as it happens, unethical, while his rival paleontologist, A.V. Harding, is fit, kind, intelligent, and female. When Parker orders a fossil destroyed to throw Harding off the trail, Tabitha unmasks, changes bosses, and declares her independence so vigorously that her previously subservient mother joins her. The story has dramatic moments but struggles beneath the weight of its message; fanatic dinophiles may find more focused books like Kathryn Lasky's Bone Wars (1988) less distracting. (Fiction. 10-13)
Pub Date: April 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-8234-1229-6
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Holiday House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 1995
BOOK REVIEW
Ebulliently original.
Who can't love a story about a Nigerian-American 12-year-old with albinism who discovers latent magical abilities and saves the world?
Sunny lives in Nigeria after spending the first nine years of her life in New York. She can't play soccer with the boys because, as she says, "being albino made the sun my enemy," and she has only enemies at school. When a boy in her class, Orlu, rescues her from a beating, Sunny is drawn in to a magical world she's never known existed. Sunny, it seems, is a Leopard person, one of the magical folk who live in a world mostly populated by ignorant Lambs. Now she spends the day in mundane Lamb school and sneaks out at night to learn magic with her cadre of Leopard friends: a handsome American bad boy, an arrogant girl who is Orlu’s childhood friend and Orlu himself. Though Sunny's initiative is thin—she is pushed into most of her choices by her friends and by Leopard adults—the worldbuilding for Leopard society is stellar, packed with details that will enthrall readers bored with the same old magical worlds. Meanwhile, those looking for a touch of the familiar will find it in Sunny's biggest victories, which are entirely non-magical (the detailed dynamism of Sunny's soccer match is more thrilling than her magical world saving).
Ebulliently original. (Fantasy. 11-13)Pub Date: April 14, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-670-01196-4
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: March 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2011
Pulled in different directions by her heart and by family duty, a daughter of the noble Fujiwara clan also has an angry ghost to appease in this busy sequel to Little Sister (1996). Two years after Mitsuko entered the land of the dead in search of her sister’s soul, ominous dreams remind her of her vow to repair a small shrine in which she once took refuge. At the same time, her father announces that Mitsuko is to marry an 11- year-old prince. She once again calls on Goranu, the mischievous, immortal shape-changer who fell in love with her. Exchanging insults and tart retorts, the two grow closer as Mitsuko faces a dragon, the shrine’s vengeful kami (spirit), and a host of other supernatural beings. Under Goranu’s tutelage, Mitsuko learns how to use her wits, and by the end has overcome the treacherous kami, helped engineer the prince’s marriage to her sister, and even met Lord Emma-O in the Court of the Dead. More than most sequels, this story relies on knowledge of its predecessor. Dalkey supplies a glossary and historical postscript, but readers unfamiliar with the first book will miss nuances in characters and relationships, and have only a sketchy picture of the 12th- century locales and social patterns. Together, however, the two novels combine a courageous teenager’s well-articulated escape from the limits and preconceptions forced on her by a rigid, highly structured upbringing with a colorful, not altogether earnest, series of encounters with powerful beings from Buddhist and Shinto lore. (Fiction. 11-13)
Pub Date: April 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-15-201652-X
Page Count: 230
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1998
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