Doughn’t miss this earnest tale.
Trouble abounds when shadowy figures dump mysterious gloop near Owl’s Outstanding Donuts.
While the neighborhood sleeps, an owl named Alfred notices the white truck as it stops and two scoundrels discard the gloop into the creek before leaving again. Worried about the pollution, Alfred alerts a local girl named Mattie Waters. At first, Mattie’s slow to act. The recent death of her mother plagues the young girl, who’s moved to Big Sur to live with Aunt Molly, owner of Owl’s. Summer’s ending, fifth grade approaches, and Mattie is finding it hard to move on. She knows, though, that the gloop-pollutant spells trouble for her aunt’s renowned doughnut shop. Together with the Little sisters (7-year-old ball of fun Beanie and the older, skeptical Sasha), Mattie must unmask the culprits behind the gloop. Again blending realism with talking animals, Yardi (The Midnight War of Mateo Martinez, 2016) devotes a significant number of pages toward unpacking Mattie’s grief in her latest novel, a narrative that shuns action in favor of introspection. This tendency mostly works thanks to a robust cast of winning characters and a satisfying emotional arc. The third-person narration sticks to Mattie for the most part, with some excursions into Alfred’s amusing point of view. Except for a few peripheral characters, a white default is assumed.
Doughn’t miss this earnest tale. (Fantasy. 8-12)Pub Date: Sept. 3, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5415-3305-9
Page Count: 232
Publisher: Carolrhoda
Review Posted Online: May 7, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The whimsy is slight—the story is not—and both its interest and its vocabulary are for the youngest members of this age...
Beverly Cleary has written all kinds of books (the most successful ones about the irrepressible Henry Huggins) but this is her first fantasy.
Actually it's plain clothes fantasy grounded in the everyday—except for the original conceit of a mouse who can talk and ride a motorcycle. A toy motorcycle, which belongs to Keith, a youngster, who comes to the hotel where Ralph lives with his family; Ralph and Keith become friends, Keith gives him a peanut butter sandwich, but finally Ralph loses the motorcycle—it goes out with the dirty linen. Both feel dreadfully; it was their favorite toy; but after Keith gets sick, and Ralph manages to find an aspirin for him in a nearby room, and the motorcycle is returned, it is left with Ralph....
The whimsy is slight—the story is not—and both its interest and its vocabulary are for the youngest members of this age group. (Fantasy. 8-12)Pub Date: Sept. 22, 1965
ISBN: 0380709244
Page Count: 180
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Oct. 16, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1965
BOOK TO SCREEN
The story would have a real chance on its own merits without these really appallingly bad episodes. (Fantasy. 8-12)
Of course this will sell—as an E.B. White item and one that the publishers are pushing hard, playing it for an adult as well as a juvenile sale.
And that is where I think it really belongs, along with Robert Lawson's books, which reach children chiefly through adults. Thurber was another, but more justifiable on the score of a nice quality of whimsy, which Stuart Little—for me at least—lacks. This seems to me pseudo-fantasy, synthetic, and lacking the tenderness that makes a story such as Wind In The Willows wholly the children's own. Undertones and overtones of this story of a mouse in a human family are unjuvenile on all counts. The central story follows the make-believe as Stuart, complete with hat, cane, pin-striped trousers, and a stout heart, embarks on his small odyssey—a hairbreadth escape in a window shade (victim of a jealous cat), high seas exploits in Central Park, near tragedy in a garbage scow. Then comes the complete flop of the schoolroom episode and the romance.
The story would have a real chance on its own merits without these really appallingly bad episodes. (Fantasy. 8-12)Pub Date: Oct. 17, 1945
ISBN: 978-0-06-026396-6
Page Count: 144
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1945
PERSPECTIVES
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