In this riveting futuristic novel, Spaz, a teenage boy with epilepsy, makes a dangerous journey in the company of an old man and a young boy. The old man, Ryter, one of the few people remaining who can read and write, has dedicated his life to recording stories. Ryter feels a kinship with Spaz, who unlike his contemporaries has a strong memory; because of his epilepsy, Spaz cannot use the mind probes that deliver entertainment straight to the brain and rot it in the process. Nearly everyone around him uses probes to escape their life of ruin and poverty, the result of an earthquake that devastated the world decades earlier. Only the “proovs,” genetically improved people, have grass, trees, and blue skies in their aptly named Eden, inaccessible to the “normals” in the Urb. When Spaz sets out to reach his dying younger sister, he and his companions must cross three treacherous zones ruled by powerful bosses. Moving from one peril to the next, they survive only with help from a proov woman. Enriched by Ryter’s allusions to nearly lost literature and full of intriguing, invented slang, the skillful writing paints two pictures of what the world could look like in the future—the burned-out Urb and the pristine Eden—then shows the limits and strengths of each. Philbrick, author of Freak the Mighty (1993) has again created a compelling set of characters that engage the reader with their courage and kindness in a painful world that offers hope, if no happy endings. (Fiction. 10-14)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-439-08758-9
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Blue Sky/Scholastic
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2000
An expansion of the classic story of the pied piper, this tells of young Penelope, left behind when the piper returns for the children of Hamelin after saving the town from rats. On her 11th birthday, she must enter the world of dreams, accompanied by an eclectic assortment of companions—a talking cat, a jump-roping dragon, a blind harpist—and eventually face the piper himself in a battle of power, greed, and music. Narrated by a 101-year-old Penelope, the story bounces between recollections of the adventure, ruminations on her life, and meeting another Penelope, who is approaching her 11th birthday. By trying to incorporate too many subplots, Richardson fails to explain some of the more central points of the main story. He also introduces and dismisses concepts and props with no consistency. Penelope brings a jump rope with her, but it is rarely mentioned until she has use for it. The only way for Penelope to resist the piper’s enchanted music is to not hear it; she suddenly becomes deaf on her 11th birthday, an occurrence left unexplained. Nor does the reader ever find out why she conveniently regains her hearing upon entering the dreamland. Contrived and disjointed, this is an original interpretation that lacks development. Likely to attract lovers of fairy-tales, but it will disappoint. (Fiction. 11-13)
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2001
ISBN: 1-55037-629-2
Page Count: 144
Publisher: Firefly
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2000
In the unforgiving terrain of eastern Oregon in the first decade of the 20th century, 12-year-old John Nolan (known to his family as “Wart”) has been given a difficult, maybe even impossible job by his father. Because his mother is about to give birth, making it impossible for Wart’s father to leave the family farm, it is up to Wart to find a group of runaway horses led by the temperamental and headstrong Ol’ Rosie. Wart’s father, gruff and uncommunicative, expects a great deal from his oldest son, leaving Wart feeling that whatever he does isn’t good enough. Wart sets off before dawn and spends the day scouring the area around the farm, but with no luck. The next day, with his father’s imaginary voice alternately chiding and encouraging him, Wart, amazingly, does manage to find the horses and get them home, but not before Ol’ Rosie has taken on a cougar and killed it, and then bolted for her freedom, a freedom that Wart doesn’t begrudge her. After Wart’s dangerous expedition, he is beginning to see things differently. “I’ve always thought of Pa as a real big man. . . . Hard as the rimrocks, strong as the biggest horse. But now all at once I saw that he isn’t all that tall. . . . Maybe he isn’t that hard, either, or that strong. . . .” Intermittently interesting, but generally slow-moving, despite the adventurous nature of Wart’s journey, this novel all too deliberately sets out to show that this experience is a life-changing, fear-conquering, coming-of-age event for Wart. At least Wart offers a dissenting point of view to the hundreds of children’s books that sing the praises of that oh-so-noble beast, the horse. Wart doesn’t like them. “You don’t get a whole lot of sympathy from a horse. A horse will kick you, and then when you’re lying there on the ground—in a pile of manure—he will walk on you before you can get up.” Not as powerful as Moeri’s earlier Save Queen of Sheba (1981) or as action-packed as Gary Paulsen’s The Haymeadow (1992), nevertheless this will appeal to readers who’ve enjoyed both. (Fiction. 8-12)
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-689-82614-1
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Atheneum
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2000
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