An often fun and engaging read, best suited for older children.
A butterfly gets sidetracked while heading south for the winter in this debut children’s adventure story by Beck and debut illustrator Flores.
Monique, a monarch butterfly, is traveling from Maine to Mexico with her flock, as they do every winter. Along the way, she meets some unfriendly, human butterfly hunters, so she hides in a dark, dank cave. In this cave is a place called Wormland, where hundreds of caterpillars of all species work long hours spinning silk for an evil death’s-head moth queen named Martha. They’ve been brainwashed and drugged so that they never turn into butterflies, but one of them, a junior high school student named Charley, begins to shed his skin in the middle of class one day. He’s targeted as a “contagious” worm, and Monique helps him escape the queen’s incompetent cockroach guards during her own quest to find the “Outside World.” Along the way, they contend with suspicious spiders, fearsome bats, kindly owls, and the queen’s ambitious son, Edgar. It’s no surprise to learn that this book started out as a screenplay, as noted in the author bio; it has the pacing and tropes of a PG-rated action movie with a sassy female lead and a closing scene that’s sealed with a kiss. Each chapter header is adorned with bright, digitally rendered illustrations by Flores, who chooses to draw the insect characters with humanoid heads and features. There’s some acknowledgement of the life cycle of caterpillars and the workings of nature, but for the most part, Beck plants the story firmly in the realm of fantasy. Parents and teachers should be aware, however, that the story features minor-character death, enslavement, ugliness portrayed as a cause of evil, and the use of some questionable language, such as the term “wench.”
An often fun and engaging read, best suited for older children.Pub Date: Aug. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-692-45349-0
Page Count: 96
Publisher: Chakra 4 Publishing
Review Posted Online: Nov. 9, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
Sisters in and out of love.
Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.
Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.
The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-250217-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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