Let's admit it, you won't get through these airy fairy-tale revisions with a straight face. You'll find no deep psychological meanings or sly social comment in Dahl's irreverent butchery; instead Dahl, in his blithely frivolous and childishly naughty way, raises the literal and moralistic questions that occur to many an unenchanted young audience: How could the giant "smell" an Englishman? Simple. Jack never took a bath. He washed himself clean for his second trip up the beanstalk and the giant slept through his gold-gathering. (Jack's mother, meanwhile, has climbed the stalk and ended up in the giant's belly. "I had a hunch that she was smelly," says Jack.) As for Goldilocks, "that brazen little crook" with no regard for antique chairs finally gets what's coming to her. Imagine the bears' position: "No sooner are you down the road/Than Goldilocks, that little toad,/That nosey thieving little louse/Comes sneaking in your empty house." If you want resourceful, independent heroines, though, here they are. Far from slumbering in wait for her prince, Snow White steals the queen's magic mirror and with it helps her seven little men ("Ex-horse-race jockeys, all of them") make a killing at the track. Little Red Riding Hood needs no hunter to dispatch the wolf; she "whips a pistol from her knickers" and ends up with a wolfskin coat. But beware—"Ah, Piglet, you must never trust/Young ladies from the upper crust"—when the third little pig calls on Red Riding Hood for help, she ends up with a second wolfskin coat and a pigskin traveling case. Blake's bloodless decapitation, wolf tongue on pig tail, and well-mannered, well-fed Little Bear are just a few obvious manifestations of his own relish for mischief.
Pub Date: April 15, 1983
ISBN: 0375815562
Page Count: 43
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Oct. 16, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1983
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
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