Bonus content aplenty, but first-time readers will be better off with either the print or the unadorned e-book version.
Digital distractions—many of them tangential, at best, to the story—have been positively shoveled into this “multi-touch edition” of Britain’s 2013 Carnegie Medal winner.
The actual story is set in an alternate Britain under the boot of an authoritarian Motherland and narrated by Standish, a bullied, dyslexic teenager who exposes a much-ballyhooed moon landing as a hoax. Adjustable of font size and also presenting different views in portrait and landscape orientation, the enhanced e-book is festooned with dozens of thumbnail images and icons in the margins. Tapping these activates extras that include video clips of the author vaunting her own dyslexia (“the greatest gift you’ve ever been given”), her troubles at school or a nearly 10-minute inspirational “speech for losers.” There are also dramatically read snippets from the text, writing prompts, review quizzes, original video shorts, and slide shows on topics such as recent civil wars or outbreaks of genocide. Photos of historical documents and skeletal constructs representing a sinister “leather coat man” mingle with Crouch’s original line drawings (presented separately here and also as a disturbing stop-motion animation) of a dead rat filling up with maggots. All of this added material, interesting as it may be, makes it nigh impossible either to follow the already-chronologically-jumbled plotline or to be caught up for more than a few moments at a time in Standish’s mordant, often lyrical narrative.
Bonus content aplenty, but first-time readers will be better off with either the print or the unadorned e-book version. (afterword, with links and more imbedded video) (Enhanced e-book/science fiction. 12-15)Pub Date: Aug. 13, 2013
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: Oct. 1, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Themes of freedom and responsibility twine between the lines of this short but heavy novel from the author of Because of Winn-Dixie (2000). Three months after his mother's death, Rob and his father are living in a small-town Florida motel, each nursing sharp, private pain. On the same day Rob has two astonishing encounters: first, he stumbles upon a caged tiger in the woods behind the motel; then he meets Sistine, a new classmate responding to her parents' breakup with ready fists and a big chip on her shoulder. About to burst with his secret, Rob confides in Sistine, who instantly declares that the tiger must be freed. As Rob quickly develops a yen for Sistine's company that gives her plenty of emotional leverage, and the keys to the cage almost literally drop into his hands, credible plotting plainly takes a back seat to character delineation here. And both struggle for visibility beneath a wagonload of symbol and metaphor: the real tiger (and the inevitable recitation of Blake's poem); the cage; Rob's dream of Sistine riding away on the beast's back; a mysterious skin condition on Rob's legs that develops after his mother's death; a series of wooden figurines that he whittles; a larger-than-life African-American housekeeper at the motel who dispenses wisdom with nearly every utterance; and the climax itself, which is signaled from the start. It's all so freighted with layers of significance that, like Lois Lowry's Gathering Blue (2000), Anne Mazer's Oxboy (1995), or, further back, Julia Cunningham's Dorp Dead (1965), it becomes more an exercise in analysis than a living, breathing story. Still, the tiger, "burning bright" with magnificent, feral presence, does make an arresting central image. (Fiction. 10-12)
Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-7636-0911-0
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2001
BOOK TO SCREEN
There is something profoundly elemental going on in Smalls’s book: the capturing of a moment of unmediated joy. It’s not melodramatic, but just a Saturday in which an African-American father and son immerse themselves in each other’s company when the woman of the house is away. Putting first things first, they tidy up the house, with an unheralded sense of purpose motivating their actions: “Then we clean, clean, clean the windows,/wipe, wipe, wash them right./My dad shines in the windows’ light.” When their work is done, they head for the park for some batting practice, then to the movies where the boy gets to choose between films. After a snack, they work their way homeward, racing each other, doing a dance step or two, then “Dad takes my hand and slows down./I understand, and we slow down./It’s a long, long walk./We have a quiet talk and smile.” Smalls treats the material without pretense, leaving it guileless and thus accessible to readers. Hays’s artwork is wistful and idyllic, just as this day is for one small boy. (Picture book. 5-8)
Pub Date: April 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-316-79899-1
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1999
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