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BRO

Name: BRO
Author: Robert Newton Peck
ISBN: 0-06-052974-1

by Robert Newton Peck ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2004

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Nine-year-old Tugwell Dockery doesn’t speak. People think it’s because of the horrible train crash that killed his parents, but no, something he witnessed years ago made him mute. His older brother, Broda Joe Dockery, knows Tug is smart and knows he’ll talk again someday, but Bro is in prison for another year, though plotting an escape. Told from several rapidly shifting, third-person points of view, the story races along. A corrupt prison warden, a prison break, a swamp full of deadly gators and snakes, and mysterious terrors in Tug’s memory give the story a larger-than-life feel. The opening chapter is a model of sharp descriptive writing, and a later birthing scene is reminiscent of a famous episode in A Day No Pigs Would Die. Allusions to prison violence and a graphic scene out of Tug’s memory make this a work for an older audience. (Fiction. 12+)

Pub Date: June 1, 2004

ISBN: 0-06-052974-1

Page Count: 160

Publisher: HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004

Categories:

CHILDREN'S SOCIAL THEMES | CHILDREN'S FAMILY | CHILDREN'S HISTORICAL FICTION

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FUDGE-A-MANIA

by Judy Blume ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 1, 1990

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A well-loved author brings together, on a Maine vacation, characters from two of her books. Peter's parents have assured him that though Sheila ("The Great") Tubman and her family will be nearby, they'll have their own house; but instead, they find a shared arrangement in which the two families become thoroughly intertwined—which suits everyone but the curmudgeonly Peter. Irrepressible little brother Fudge, now five, is planning to marry Sheila, who agrees to babysit with Peter's toddler sister; there's a romance between the grandparents in the two families; and the wholesome good fun, including a neighborhood baseball game featuring an aging celebrity player, seems more important than Sheila and Peter's halfhearted vendetta. The story's a bit tame (no controversies here), but often amusingly true to life and with enough comic episodes to satisfy fans.