This delicious ramble picks up a year after My One Hundred Adventures (2008) left off, and Jane Fielding, now 13, isn’t just dreaming of having adventures but is experiencing a doozy of one. The family has had to flee Saskatchewan because her flighty stepfather Ned was fired, so Jane finds herself on the road with him, her dreamy, curiously checked-out poet mom, three younger siblings and a possibly hot bag of cash that needs unloading. Plot plays second fiddle to Jane’s brilliant, dryly humorous musings about everything from Canadian winter to place memory to the talents of a diner waitress, but there’s plenty of intrigue to keep the pages turning, including a visit to a First Nation village, a Las Vegas diversion and a trip to Ned’s mother’s horse ranch, where Jane, mortifyingly, falls for an indifferent wrangler. Jane’s observations of her quirky, likable family are comical but compassionate, and her perennial penchant for adventure—unlike Ned’s—is always tempered by her attachment to her Massachusetts home. A detour-rich road trip well worth the ride. (Fiction. 12 & up)
Pub Date: Feb. 23, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-375-86110-9
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Paraclete Press
Review Posted Online: May 18, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2010
“Imagine an age when there were still people around who’d seen U.S. Grant with their own eyes, and men who’d voted for Lincoln.” Fifteen-year-old Howard Leland Hutchings visits his father’s family in Grand Tower, Illinois, in 1916, and meets four old people who raised his father. The only thing he knows about them is that they lived through the Civil War. Grandma Tilly, slender as a girl but with a face “wrinkled like a walnut,” tells Howard their story. Sitting up on the Devil’s Backbone overlooking the Mississippi River, she “handed over the past like a parcel.” It’s a story of two mysterious women from New Orleans, of ghosts, soldiers, and seers, of quadroons, racism, time, and the river. Peck writes beautifully, bringing history alive through Tilly’s marvelous voice and deftly handling themes of family, race, war, and history. A rich tale full of magic, mystery, and surprise. (author’s note) (Fiction. 12+)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-8037-2735-6
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2003
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A wartime drama with enough depth and psychological complexity to satisfy budding bookworms.
Three plucky orphan siblings are in search of a mother in wartime England.
When their grandmother dies, 12-year-old William, 11-year-old Edmund, and 9-year-old Anna are left in London in the care of an elderly housekeeper. As part of the World War II evacuation of children to safety, they are relocated to the countryside, something the family solicitor hopes may lead to finding adoptive parents. However, they are billeted with the Forresters, an unpleasant family reminiscent of the Dursleys. Bullying by their hosts’ two sons, who despise them; the ever present fear of German attack; and the dread of homelessness test their mettle to the limit. The orphans long to find a home of their own, and good boy William is stressed by his responsibility as head of the small family. Edmund’s desire for revenge against the Forresters and a prank involving a snake get them evicted from their billet, and they end up in a much worse situation. They find sanctuary in the village library and a savior in the librarian, who is married to a German and therefore ostracized by the locals. Mrs. Müller provides them with moral support, a listening ear, and true appreciation and love. The classic books she chooses for them—The Wind in the Willows and Anne of Green Gables, among others—may generate ideas for further reading. All characters are White.
A wartime drama with enough depth and psychological complexity to satisfy budding bookworms. (reading list) (Historical fiction. 12-16)Pub Date: Feb. 2, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-8234-4705-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Margaret Ferguson/Holiday House
Review Posted Online: Nov. 16, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
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