In this YA novel, a young girl from Kansas begins to realize she has a special destiny involving the winds.
Living in tiny Pratt, Kansas, almost-11-year-old Yonni Hale can only dream of a different life: “Surely, somewhere, some way, life had to be easier, more exciting, more magical….Maybe it would just come to her right here, if she wished upon a star hard enough.” As unlikely as that seems, after her father accidentally hits her on the head, Yonni has a visitation from the magical world—a strange vision in which four horses turn into four large spirit-women, who show her a small town being struck by a tornado; they ask whether she will help a mysterious Her, advising Yonni to “seek the Vent.” Meanwhile, in the Mexican Quarter of town, the rented homes of Yonni’s friends are being threatened by a greedy political scam involving a highway project. There might be an out: Margaret Bronte, an elderly spinster, owns a house in the area slated for razing, and if it can be declared of historic value, perhaps the project can be delayed or blocked. Can Yonni and her friends save the neighborhood? And can Yonni harness the winds to help? Hill’s debut—a sequel, Yonni Hale and the South Wind, is planned—draws on powerful themes common to YA fantasy (some of which, like the Dark is Rising series, she name-checks): An otherwise ordinary young person with a special destiny gets supernatural help and guidance. Wind and storm are interwoven throughout, whether explicitly in the names of the horse-women (Feng Popo, the Chinese wind goddess) or more subtly (the name Bronte means thunder; Yonni’s Grandma Izzy has a horse named Lightning). While Hill does a good job getting inside Yonni’s head, the storytelling is leisurely and sometimes dull, full of details that don’t contribute much to the story. After 500-plus pages, the cliffhanger ending is a letdown.
Slow pace holds back this tale of a spunky young heroine.
Pub Date: Feb. 17, 2014
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 422
Publisher: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.
Review Posted Online: Aug. 1, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
Little Blue’s fans will enjoy the animal sounds and counting opportunities, but it’s the sparkling lights on the truck’s own...
The sturdy Little Blue Truck is back for his third adventure, this time delivering Christmas trees to his band of animal pals.
The truck is decked out for the season with a Christmas wreath that suggests a nose between headlights acting as eyeballs. Little Blue loads up with trees at Toad’s Trees, where five trees are marked with numbered tags. These five trees are counted and arithmetically manipulated in various ways throughout the rhyming story as they are dropped off one by one to Little Blue’s friends. The final tree is reserved for the truck’s own use at his garage home, where he is welcomed back by the tree salestoad in a neatly circular fashion. The last tree is already decorated, and Little Blue gets a surprise along with readers, as tiny lights embedded in the illustrations sparkle for a few seconds when the last page is turned. Though it’s a gimmick, it’s a pleasant surprise, and it fits with the retro atmosphere of the snowy country scenes. The short, rhyming text is accented with colored highlights, red for the animal sounds and bright green for the numerical words in the Christmas-tree countdown.
Little Blue’s fans will enjoy the animal sounds and counting opportunities, but it’s the sparkling lights on the truck’s own tree that will put a twinkle in a toddler’s eyes. (Picture book. 2-5)Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-544-32041-3
Page Count: 24
Publisher: HMH Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 11, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2014
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