A quiet, elegant, poignant story suffused with humor, heart, and goodness.
An unusual dog rescues two children from a storm.
Teddy, an Irish wolfhound, has lived with Sylvan, a poet, in a rural cabin ever since his rescue from a shelter. Teddy learns human language, but Sylvan tells the dog only poets and children will understand when he speaks. When Sylvan sickens and dies, Teddy stays on at the cabin, and during a blizzard a few days later, Teddy finds two children, Flora, 8, and Nickel, 11, lost in the storm. (Oddly, the cover illustration shows the children as black-haired and brown-skinned, but in the text Nickel is described as having blond hair, implying whiteness.) Teddy leads the children to Sylvan’s cabin, where they make it a cozy shelter. The narrative interweaves Teddy’s remembrances of living with Sylvan with the present adventure. The three converse (Sylvan was right about that), and themes of being left and being rescued are explored as Teddy explains how Sylvan died and the children explain how they ended up alone outside in the blizzard. Thrumming throughout is the children’s unexpressed worry of what will happen to Teddy when their parents retrieve them. This is resolved in the best way possible and could, in the hands of a less refined writer, have become pat. MacLachlan’s treatment, however, is magical.
A quiet, elegant, poignant story suffused with humor, heart, and goodness. (Fantasy. 6-12)Pub Date: Sept. 13, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-06-229262-9
Page Count: 112
Publisher: Katherine Tegen/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 13, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2016
Readers can still rely on this series to bring laughs.
The Heffley family’s house undergoes a disastrous attempt at home improvement.
When Great Aunt Reba dies, she leaves some money to the family. Greg’s mom calls a family meeting to determine what to do with their share, proposing home improvements and then overruling the family’s cartoonish wish lists and instead pushing for an addition to the kitchen. Before bringing in the construction crew, the Heffleys attempt to do minor maintenance and repairs themselves—during which Greg fails at the work in various slapstick scenes. Once the professionals are brought in, the problems keep getting worse: angry neighbors, terrifying problems in walls, and—most serious—civil permitting issues that put the kibosh on what work’s been done. Left with only enough inheritance to patch and repair the exterior of the house—and with the school’s dismal standardized test scores as a final straw—Greg’s mom steers the family toward moving, opening up house-hunting and house-selling storylines (and devastating loyal Rowley, who doesn’t want to lose his best friend). While Greg’s positive about the move, he’s not completely uncaring about Rowley’s action. (And of course, Greg himself is not as unaffected as he wishes.) The gags include effectively placed callbacks to seemingly incidental events (the “stress lizard” brought in on testing day is particularly funny) and a lampoon of after-school-special–style problem books. Just when it seems that the Heffleys really will move, a new sequence of chaotic trouble and property destruction heralds a return to the status quo. Whew.
Readers can still rely on this series to bring laughs. (Graphic/fiction hybrid. 8-12)Pub Date: Nov. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4197-3903-3
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Amulet/Abrams
Review Posted Online: Nov. 18, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
This outing lacks the sophistication of such category standards as Clementine; here’s hoping English amps things up for...
A gentle voice and familiar pitfalls characterize this tale of a boy navigating the risky road to responsibility.
Gavin is new to his neighborhood and Carver Elementary. He likes his new friend, Richard, and has a typically contentious relationship with his older sister, Danielle. When Gavin’s desire to impress Richard sets off a disastrous chain of events, the boy struggles to evade responsibility for his actions. “After all, it isn’t his fault that Danielle’s snow globe got broken. Sure, he shouldn’t have been in her room—but then, she shouldn’t be keeping candy in her room to tempt him. Anybody would be tempted. Anybody!” opines Gavin once he learns the punishment for his crime. While Gavin has a charming Everyboy quality, and his aversion to Aunt Myrtle’s yapping little dog rings true, little about Gavin distinguishes him from other trouble-prone protagonists. He is, regrettably, forgettable. Coretta Scott King Honor winner English (Francie, 1999) is a teacher whose storytelling usually benefits from her day job. Unfortunately, the pizzazz of classroom chaos is largely absent from this series opener.
This outing lacks the sophistication of such category standards as Clementine; here’s hoping English amps things up for subsequent volumes. (Fiction. 6-9)Pub Date: Dec. 17, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-547-97044-8
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Clarion Books
Review Posted Online: Oct. 1, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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