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THICKER THAN WATER

Name: THICKER THAN WATER
Author: Penelope Farmer
ISBN: 1-56402-178-5

by Penelope Farmer ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 1, 1993

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In a subtle exploration of loss, grief, and family ties, Farmer (Charlotte Sometimes, 1969, etc.) incorporates an uneasy ghost yearning for decent burial into an orphaned boy's difficulties adapting to a new home. Becky learns of her mother's twin sister only as Megan is dying of an overdose, leaving a son, Will, Becky's age—a slim, dark boy who has lived in foster care since being abused by one of Megan's boyfriends, and who's never known a father. After coming from London to Becky's family in Derbyshire, Will hears urgent pleas in the night: ``Help me!'' The cries are audible to no one else, though the whole family is troubled by other manifestations—mysterious vandalism, unlocked doors, a Christmas tree that withers overnight. In alternating narratives, Will and Becky reveal a mutual dislike gradually transformed into familial amity seasoned with comfortable bickering; meanwhile, they deduce that the ghost was a laborer- -like Will a neglected child—trapped in a nearby mine. Driven by his own troubled past and the ghost's demands, blamed for his moody unpredictability as well as the ghost's misdeeds, Will decides on a desperately perilous way to free them both. Deftly individualizing even her minor players, Farmer crafts the family dynamics—the competitive twins, the newly acquainted cousins, the contrasting relationships between parents and children—with leisurely care, building toward a splendidly dramatic denouement. Unusually rich and involving. (Fiction. 10-15)

Pub Date: May 1, 1993

ISBN: 1-56402-178-5

Page Count: 208

Publisher: Candlewick

Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 1993

Categories:

CHILDREN'S GENERAL CHILDREN'S

- BOOK REVIEW
PENELOPE
by Penelope Farmer

- BOOK REVIEW
CHARLOTTE SOMETIMES
by Penelope Farmer

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COLT

by Nancy Springer ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 1, 1991

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Colt, who has spina bifida, is introduced to riding in a special program for handicapped children. Reluctant at first, he soon learns that being on a horse not only strengthens his muscles but empowers him with new independence and courage, a better route to self-identity than his former brattiness. Meanwhile, his mother Audrey marries Brad, a gentle, sympathetic man with a teenage son (``Rosie'') and a daughter Colt's age. What would normally be a minor incident—Colt's mount jolts him when he starts to trot—is life-threatening for Colt, and Audrey reluctantly decides that the riding must stop. Colt becomes despondent, but then Brad comes up with an especially safe mount and the family agrees that, as Colt has pleaded, the rewards of his riding are worth the risks. Indeed—in a satisfying scene dramatizing how Colt can overcome his limitations, he rescues his stepbrother when the two are alone together and Rosie is injured. The plot here is familiar, the details concerning spina bifida obviously purposive. But Springer's characters, striving to create a loving new family, come alive as exceptionally warm, nice people who try to solve their unavoidable problems without dissipating emotional energy in rivalries or self-pity. Sweet but not saccharine: a satisfying horse story with fine extra dimensions. (Fiction. 10-13)

Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1991

ISBN: 0-8037-1022-4

Page Count: 128

Publisher: Dial Books

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1991

Categories:

CHILDREN'S GENERAL CHILDREN'S

- BOOK REVIEW
ENOLA HOLMES AND THE ELEGANT ESCAPADE
by Nancy Springer

- BOOK REVIEW
ENOLA HOLMES AND THE BLACK BAROUCHE
by Nancy Springer

- BOOK REVIEW
MY SISTER'S STALKER
by Nancy Springer

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HUNT FOR THE LAST CAT

by Justin Denzel ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 7, 1991

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As an aging saber-toothed tiger prowls prehistoric Florida, a young paleo-Indian struggles to escape his tribe's superstitious beliefs. Is the old cat the ghost of a saber-tooth slain four years earlier, come to take its revenge? Is the wanderer Fonn that same ghost, in the shape of a young woman? Dour, the shaman, insists that these things are so, but 12-summer-old Thom wonders: Fonn seems real to him, and she says that the cat is only an animal, huge and ferocious but mortal. As Bonnie Pryor did in Seth of the Lion People (1988), Denzel paints the prehistoric scene in some detail but is less conscientious about creating believable early people—''It is the mark of Smilodon,'' Fonn remarks learnedly, looking at a pawprint. Nonetheless, Denzel offers another well-paced adventure that, like his Boy of the Painted Cave (1988), captures a transition between old and new, ignorance and knowledge. In the end, Thom escapes Dour's influence, and he and Fonn witness an epic battle between Great Claw (the last giant sloth) and the wounded, rabid saber-tooth. Their deaths mark the end of the age of giant mammals; for readers who don't get the point, the author suggests in an afterword that we too shall pass. (Fiction. 11-14)