Unlike Jane Austen’s classic exploration of passion versus reserve, this homage to Sense and Sensibility itself falls victim to exaggeration and melodrama. As in the original, there are three Dashwood sisters, the eldest calm and the second impulsive. They live with their mother in the ancestral family home, which their father vacated when he fell for a young, fake-breasted health nut and remarried. He soon dies penniless and the destitute Dashwoods remove to a small cottage. Ellie and Abby (the eldest and middle sisters) have plotlines similar to Sense and Sensibility, with boys filling the same roles as in the original, but revelations fall flat. Rushton uses a jarring combination of Austen and update; for example, why is eldest sister Ellie named after Austen’s Elinor but second sister Abby not named after Austen’s Marianne? Hard-to-believe details include emotions that change too quickly and muttered put-downs that the victim (standing right there) never hears. Leans vaguely on Austen’s structure without developing its own substance or grace; unsatisfying. (Fiction. 10-13)
Pub Date: April 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-7868-5136-8
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Hyperion
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2005
BOOK REVIEW
Most Holocaust stories for children focus on the inhumanity that took place in European countries; fewer deal with the severe hardships experienced by children sent to America and their struggles to assimilate into a foreign culture. Based on the experiences of the author’s mother as part of the One Thousand Children project, this empathetic historical novel rings with authenticity. Edith Westerfeld is 12 when her parents send her from their German home to America. Almost half of the story takes place aboard the ship as she and the other lonely refugee children turn to each other to ease their fears. Life in Chicago is filled with discrimination; even her aunt treats her like a servant. The one bright spot is following Hank Greenberg’s baseball career, but wearing her mother’s Star of David doesn’t keep him from being drafted or bring her parents to America (they die in concentration camps). The title’s significance is revealed on the last page: As Edith mourns the loss of everything, she realizes that to honor her parents she must be willing to live. Moving. (Historical fiction. 10-13)
Pub Date: March 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-374-17744-7
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Jan. 20, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2010
Around her private trove of atmospheric old photographs, Newbery winner Lowry (The Giver, 1993; Number the Stars, 1990) spins a patchy but sensitive tale of a country doctor’s daughter observing the lives of those around her—in particular the women, and a mentally disabled teenager with a strong affinity for animals. Writing as an older adult, Katy looks back to 1911, the year she first became aware of the new hired girl’s brother Jacob. “Touched by God,” according to his mother, dubbed “imbecile” by ruder locals, Jacob never speaks, does not go to school, and never makes eye contact. But he ably helps to care for the livestock on his family’s farm, whether it be with routine milking, or the delicate task of persuading a ewe to accept a lamb rejected by its own mother. Taking her cue from the steady, tolerant adults around her, Katy treats him with respect, learning to be comfortable around him in their occasional meetings, and even to understand him a little. Jacob passes in and out of view as other events, from the arrival of a new baby in her household, to the planning of her ninth birthday party, not only absorb more of Katy's attention, but give her narrative an episodic structure; several of the characters, in fact, seem constructed more to flesh out the photos at their heads than to advance the story. Jacob's story ends in a tragedy deftly foreshadowed. Katy wraps up the loose ends by describing what became of the other major characters. Though well-crafted and narrated by a perceptive, large-hearted child who goes on to follow in her father’s profession, this lacks the focus of Lowry’s best work. (Fiction. 11-13)
Pub Date: April 28, 2003
ISBN: 0-618-28231-9
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Walter Lorraine/Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2003
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