The Potkoorok, Turongs and Nyols — those trick-playing spirits from aboriginal lore who helped save Sydney's Botanical Gardens from a parking lot developer in An Older Kind of Magic (KR, 1972), are less cooperative when the human hero's enemy is an ancient rocklike monster who shares the mythological creatures' displeasure with the crew from town that has begun to clear the ridge at Wongadilla. Simon Brent, newly orphaned and come to live on the remote sheep run with old Charlie Waters and his sister Edie, is amused when the mischievous spirits dump the grader into the pond one night and hide the bulldozer inside the mountain the next, but he is terrified by the angry howl of the primordial Norgun, recently arrived at the spot after a slow 80-year journey from his long-time home to the south. Unlike most grownups in juvenile fantasy, Charlie and Edie remember the "old Pot-K" and the Turongs from their childhood and totally accept Simon's assertion that that large mossy rock on the mountain is really a deeply menacing monster. The various elf-creatures, though agreeing that the Nargun does not belong there, are loth to cross him, but Charlie in an effort to drive the monster away manages to start up the muffler-less dozer inside the mountain — inducing instead a confrontation between rock and metal as the machine is wrecked and the Nargun trapped inside by an avalanche that seals up the cave's opening. Wrightson's considerable skill in managing texture and tension ensures that admirers of serious fantasy will breathe the air of Wongadill along with Simon, and to her credit the symbols and issues here represent a perspective more complex than is usual in fictional conflicts between technology and nature. But Simon's dreaded earth monster hardly justifies the author's overreaching attempt to make of him a timeless, literally star-shaking occasion for "naked pity" and "naked fear."
Pub Date: March 20, 1974
ISBN: 1846470765
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Atheneum
Review Posted Online: May 11, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1974
A hymn to the intrinsic loveliness of the wild and the possibility of sharing it.
What happens when a robot washes up alone on an island?
“Everything was just right on the island.” Brown beautifully re-creates the first days of Roz, the protagonist of his Wild Robot novels, as she adapts to living in the natural world. A storm-tossed ship, seen in the opening just before the title page, and a packing crate are the only other human-made objects to appear in this close-up look at the robot and her new home. Roz emerges from the crate, and her first thought as she sets off up a grassy hill—”This must be where I belong”—is sweetly glorious, a note of recognition rather than conquest. Roz learns to move, hide, and communicate like the creatures she meets. When she discovers an orphaned egg—and the gosling Brightbill, who eventually hatches—her decision to be his mother seems a natural extension of her adaptation. Once he flies south for the winter, her quiet wait across seasons for his return is a poignant portrayal of separation and change. Brown’s clean, precise lines and deep, light-filled colors offer a sense of what Roz might be seeing, suggesting a place that is alive yet deeply serene and radiant. Though the book stands alone, it adds an immensely appealing dimension to Roz’s world. Round thumbnails offer charming peeks into the island world, depicting Roz’s animal neighbors and Brightbill’s maturation.
A hymn to the intrinsic loveliness of the wild and the possibility of sharing it. (author’s note) (Picture book. 3-6)Pub Date: June 24, 2025
ISBN: 9780316669467
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: March 22, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2025
After some autobiographical excursions, Dahl here returns to the sort of whimsically grotesque fantasy that makes grown-ups wince and children beg for more. His heroine is five-year-old Matilda, a genius whose mathematical abilities, as well as her impressive reading list (Hemingway, Steinbeck, etc.), are totally unappreciated by her father—a dishonest used-car salesman—and her mother, a devotee of bingo and TV soaps. Only when the girl enters school does she find an understanding ally, Miss Honey, a paragon of virtue who attempts to defend her pupils against unbelievably cruel headmistress Miss Trunchbull, who hates children in direct proportion to their youth and tortures them accordingly. Just when things seem to be at their worst, Matilda discovers still another gift, telekinesis, enabling her to defeat the horrible Trunchbull and give Miss Honey, and herself, a new start. Dahl's tightly woven plots, his strict sense of absolute justice, and his raunchy "funny bits" make him popular with children who also appreciate the empowerment he grants to his smaller, weaker protagonists. Matilda is the most simplistic of his efforts in this direction, but it does retain the time-honored appeal, abetted by Blake's apt illustrations. It probably should be marked "For Children Only," though. And Dahl slips badly when he says that C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien have no "funny bits" in their books.
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1988
ISBN: 0142410373
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Oct. 16, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1988
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