An earnest and charming but underdeveloped read.
Nine children visit their grandparents’ campground and are forever changed in Clark’s supernatural middle-grade novel.
In the summer of 1985, nine siblings, a mix of siblings and cousinsranging in age from 9 to 13—Alex, MJ, Lucy, Cora, Carrie, Will, Leo, Philip, and Eliza Jessie—arrive at Camp Nokomis to stay with their grandparents, Hannah and Will. Upon their arrival, a storm begins, and Hannah (who is Ojibway) asks each of them to name their individual strengths, and, later, with what animals they feel the strongest connection. The kids help their grandparents around the camp, forming groups for different tasks, such as cleaning up the beach. One day, Lucy communicates telepathically with a deer, and, shortly thereafter, the kids’ chosen animals become totems and guides for them: Hawk for Alex, Owl for MJ, Deer for Lucy, Coyote for Cora, Bear for Carrie, Horse for Will, Beaver for Leo, Bat for Philip, and Panther for Eliza Jessie. The children spend time with their guides learning how to transform into their respective totems; Hannah and Will, whose guides are Raven and Turtle, respectively, answer questions. It turns out this ennead (group of nine) was preordained to help “bring change.” The kids set about doing activities to help Mother Earth. Clark’s sweet, accessible story effectively highlights Indigenous customs, as when Hannah and Will teach the children about smudging and the importance of drums. Just as clear is the story’s overarching message that humans need to take better care of the planet and work in harmony with nature. However, Clark’s prose has a tendency to explicitly describe what the story is about (“this part of our story will not be about the day-to-day world of becoming. It will be about the events, experiences, and breakthroughs that are part of awakening to their true selves”), and the plot itself feels rather sparse. Most of the story follows the characters as they split their time between doing chores and having meetings; the main antagonists—poachers and a development company that could destroy the land—don’t arrive until near the end.
An earnest and charming but underdeveloped read.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 9781039170810
Page Count: 319
Publisher: FriesenPress
Review Posted Online: July 19, 2023
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
An entertaining take on family values, Wimpy Kid style.
A summer vacation turns out to be anything but relaxing for Greg and a teeming horde of Heffleys.
Gramma declines the offer of a grand birthday celebration, saying that “what would make her REALLY happy is if everyone else went to Ruttyneck Island”—though she prepares individual packs of her legendary meatballs. (“You knew exactly how much Gramma likes you by how many meatballs you got.”) A gaggle of Heffley relatives and a dog stuff themselves into a small beach house, where overcrowding, personality conflicts, and simmering resentments become just some of the ingredients in a rolling boil of sitcom-style catastrophes, not to mention questionable decisions ranging from leaving the kids to make dinner unsupervised to labeling a cooler “HUMAN ORGANS” to keep random passersby from helping themselves. As usual, Greg supplies the setups in poker-faced journal entries interspersed with black-and-white drawings of slouched figures bearing frowny expressions of dismay or annoyance to cue the laffs. Gramma, it eventually turns out, not only (unsurprisingly) has plans of her own, but is also keeping a shocking secret about those meatballs. To go with the knee-slapping set pieces, Kinney slips in a tasty bit of family lore about how Greg’s parents met, plus droll takes on such low-hanging comedy fruit as restaurant manners, viciously competitive board games, and social media influencers (Greg being one, albeit with zero followers, and his Aunt Veronica’s little dog being another, with 3.8 million).
An entertaining take on family values, Wimpy Kid style. (Graphic/fiction hybrid. 8-12)Pub Date: Oct. 22, 2024
ISBN: 9781419766954
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Amulet/Abrams
Review Posted Online: Oct. 22, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2024
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