Humor carries the day in this British import.
The shrimplike being washed up near Caitlin’s island home has surprising characteristics.
Ten-year-old, white, possibly dyslexic narrator Caitlin is a social and academic misfit. Her only friend, Frank, is a would-be fisherman enlisted to take her by boat to and from school. At home, her accomplished parents are too distracted to attend to her. A massive storm before Caitlin’s terrible last day of school results in hundreds of dead jellyfish and drops an odd creature, its white, malleable shell covered in strange symbols, into the marshes. Recognizing it as something special, Caitlin saves it from dehydration. As the creature learns to talk, it latches on to Caitlin’s explanation (perigee) of a photograph of the full moon in her astrobiologist father’s book. Unfortunately Perijee’s outsized self-defense mechanism brings about a minor apocalypse, flooding villages and towns and forcing most of the country’s population into refugee camps. Caitlin’s awkwardness is sometimes cringeworthy, but her warmhearted loyalty to Perijee makes her bravely seek to rescue him from those who want to destroy him (nearly everyone). A sinister cult of little old ladies figures in the climax, along with Frank the fisherman and another resourceful girl with a knack for thievery. Montgomery’s jam-packed narrative doesn’t slow for an instant in this exaggeratedly comic drama. While there are just a few thoughtful moments, there are several irresistibly funny ones.
Humor carries the day in this British import. (Science fiction. 8-11)Pub Date: Sept. 13, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-399-55397-4
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Wendy Lamb/Random
Review Posted Online: May 31, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2016
However the compelling fitness of theme and event and the apt but unexpected imagery (the opening sentences compare the...
At a time when death has become an acceptable, even voguish subject in children's fiction, Natalie Babbitt comes through with a stylistic gem about living forever.
Protected Winnie, the ten-year-old heroine, is not immortal, but when she comes upon young Jesse Tuck drinking from a secret spring in her parents' woods, she finds herself involved with a family who, having innocently drunk the same water some 87 years earlier, haven't aged a moment since. Though the mood is delicate, there is no lack of action, with the Tucks (previously suspected of witchcraft) now pursued for kidnapping Winnie; Mae Tuck, the middle aged mother, striking and killing a stranger who is onto their secret and would sell the water; and Winnie taking Mae's place in prison so that the Tucks can get away before she is hanged from the neck until....? Though Babbitt makes the family a sad one, most of their reasons for discontent are circumstantial and there isn't a great deal of wisdom to be gleaned from their fate or Winnie's decision not to share it.
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1975
ISBN: 0312369816
Page Count: 164
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: April 13, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1975
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
Certain to elicit both gales of giggles and winces of sympathy (not to mention recognition) from young readers.
First volume of a planned three, this edited version of an ongoing online serial records a middle-school everykid’s triumphs and (more often) tribulations through the course of a school year.
Largely through his own fault, mishaps seem to plague Greg at every turn, from the minor freak-outs of finding himself permanently seated in class between two pierced stoners and then being saddled with his mom for a substitute teacher, to being forced to wrestle in gym with a weird classmate who has invited him to view his “secret freckle.” Presented in a mix of legible “hand-lettered” text and lots of simple cartoon illustrations with the punch lines often in dialogue balloons, Greg’s escapades, unwavering self-interest and sardonic commentary are a hoot and a half.
Certain to elicit both gales of giggles and winces of sympathy (not to mention recognition) from young readers. (Fiction. 9-11)Pub Date: April 1, 2007
ISBN: 0-8109-9313-9
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Amulet/Abrams
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2007
SEEN & HEARD
PERSPECTIVES
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