Illustrated with delicate full-color spot and page-size illustrations, Godden's newest has the timeless appeal of much of her work. Not unlike Burnett's Mary Lennox, impulsive Keiko is spoiled and selfish when she arrives at her great-grandparents' country home; her citified ways, meanwhile, seem just plain raucous in this setting of precious plum blossom dishes and tiny pretend teas under the trees, with pine needles as chopsticks. Initiating her into an appreciation of nature and the habits of the elderly folk is younger cousin Yìji, whose precocious insights are tempered by his good-hearted enthusiasm. An artist who is outwardly somewhat brusque, Great Grandfather paints Keiko's portrait on a rare occasion when she makes herself sit still; his wife, ``Old Mother,'' has crinkly, doll-like features that would set any child at ease. When Keiko rescues Yìji with quick thinking, she is no changeling made over into an ideal of girlhood, but simply a child who has redirected her high spirits to useful causes. A small, charming book. (Fiction. 8+)
Pub Date: May 27, 1993
ISBN: 0-688-11319-2
Page Count: 76
Publisher: Greenwillow Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 1993
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
In this short fantasy novel, nine-year-old Rowanna, who lives in an isolated cottage with an old fisherman she calls Master, longs to learn more about her mother. Master has forbidden Rowanna to enter the woods near the cottage, which he claims are full of dangerous tree ghouls. But a playful young bear coaxes Rowanna into the woods and after they becomes friends, she spends her days there. On High Hallow Eve, the two friends take a day-long journey to find the tree where Master discovered Rowanna as a baby. A wild night ensues when the tree spirits emerge and dance with joy, and Rowanna learns the secret of her mother, who is a willow tree. The revelation, though, creates a major inconsistency in the fantasy, causing the reader to wonder why the mother’s tree spirit didn’t simply rescue Rowanna years earlier. Barron (The Wings of Merlin, 2000, etc.) writes lyrically about the forest and seasons, but he has unfortunately tried to give the language an old-fashioned sound by repeated use of words like “mayhaps” and “aye.” He also relies heavily on exclamation points and italics to add emotion. For example, when Rowanna sees a drawing in the sand, she realizes, “It was the face of the master himself! Aye, that it was!” The uncomplicated, slightly predictable story will appeal only to fantasy and fairy-tale lovers who can overlook the often stilted prose. Forsooth. (Fiction 8-11)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-399-23457-8
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Philomel
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2001
Readers may wonder if they really needed a poem for every day of the school year.
This novel in verse is a remarkable feat of mimicry. The poems sound exactly like they were written by real fifth-graders.
Ms. Hill’s students, a diverse bunch judging by their names and their pictures, are required to write a poem every morning. (They listen to folk music while they’re writing, which says a lot about Ms. Hill.) One Seuss-inspired poem includes the stanza “Some kids are glad and some are sad. / You sit by Teacher. Were you bad?” That level of authenticity is hard to take unless it reveals something about the characters’ personalities. Happily, many of the students are worth getting to know, like Newt Mathews, a boy with Asperger’s who rescues the frogs hiding in the school’s back brick wall. Their story is compelling enough: as the title hints, the students are trying to prevent their school from being torn down. But too much of the plot feels conventional. When a student gets a crush on a girl who claims to hate him, some readers will pray that they don’t fall in love. The last section of the book is full of lovely, inventive moments. A set of instructions for making a flipbook somehow becomes a metaphor for loss. But too many poems—especially a bad parody of “Big Yellow Taxi”—simply don’t work.
Readers may wonder if they really needed a poem for every day of the school year. (glossary, guide to poetic forms) (Verse novel. 8-12)Pub Date: April 12, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-553-52137-5
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Wendy Lamb/Random
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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