The traditional selkie story plays out in an arc of unrequited love and abandonment in this moody iteration.
Writing in terse prose cast into short lines, Virgo begins the story with the sailor going to sea as a boy but halfway through suddenly shifts point of view to that of the dreamy child born to the silent couple years later. The author shows similar indecision in describing the selkie’s garment. It is a “shadow” when the sailor steals it and a “roll of white skin” when the boy (rather than, as is more common, his mother) at last takes it down to the sea one night and swims “out under the old / moon’s path on the waters, leaving / his memories behind.” As if the sailor’s immoral act and the ensuing picture of failed domestic life in the narrative isn’t sad and remote enough, Pérez adds a full suite of subtly tinted sketches that depict either small, slumped figures in lonely landscapes or claustrophobic assemblages of floating bodies or heads, detached hands and surreal fish with human faces. As the lead victim, the selkie woman is most likely to draw sympathy from readers, but she is the least developed of the three central figures. Not much here for children, but the portentous atmosphere may prompt readers of the inked and pierced set to overlook the story’s overall lack of clarity or cohesion. (Folk tale. 14-18)
Pub Date: June 10, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-88899-971-9
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Groundwood
Review Posted Online: May 4, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2014
Categories: CHILDREN'S SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY | CHILDREN'S FAMILY
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Tragedy hovers over a blossoming romance.
Brazilian-American Sebastian “Bash” Alvaréz is just trying to get by when he meets the nerdy, white Birdie Paxton. The two spark up some romantic fire, but disaster quickly strikes. Late one night, Bash and his ne’er-do-well pal “Wild” Kyle are driving erratically (Kyle is at the wheel) and slam right into Birdie’s baby brother, Benny. The boys flee the scene, while Benny slips into a coma and the town begins to hunt for the perpetrators of the hit-and-run. Bash keeps his secret from Birdie as they grow closer, and readers will roll their eyes at the excessive misery. The author gives Bash a dying mother to balance out the equation, but the choice overloads the devastation factor. With everything emotional and awful and crazy and turned up to 11, nothing really sticks out. The two moping, guilt-ridden protagonists are drawn well enough—they alternate narration—but seem to be stuck in a narrative hell bent on getting readers to cry. Secondary characters are poorly sketched, given no interior life, and merely activated to interact with Birdie and Bash. The novel’s end is disproportionately sunny and hopeful, giving readers tonal whiplash. A last-minute Hail Mary act gets the teens out of the narrative corner, but it feels spectacularly tacked-on.
A tear-jerker that fails to connect despite desperate effort. (Fiction. 14-17)Pub Date: July 25, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-250-11622-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
Review Posted Online: April 17, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2017
Categories: CHILDREN'S SOCIAL THEMES | CHILDREN'S FAMILY
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BOOK REVIEW
Ten “vintage tales” chosen to challenge assumptions that fairy stories offer cut-and-dried values and life lessons for, specifically, children.
Reaching for an audience that is, as the editors put it, “beyond childhood,” the collection is introduced with an eye-opening analysis of “Little Red Riding Hood” (Perrault’s actual wording, it seems, hints that Little Red and the wolf weren’t exactly strangers) as part of a broad claim that fairy tales are often transgressive. The ensuing mix of original and traditional stories, all either written or first translated into English in the Victorian era, includes tales both familiar and un-. There’s “East o’ the Sun and West o’ the Moon”; “Ballad of the Bird-Bride,” which is a selkie variant featuring a sea gull; a “Puss-in-Boots” antecedent (“Costantino Fortunato”) from 16th-century Italy; and a Punjabi tale about a rat who almost parlays a bit of found root into marriage to a princess. For younger readers, the highlight is likely to be Joseph Jacobs' rendition of “The Story of the Three Bears,” as the home invader is not Goldilocks but a foulmouthed old homeless woman. But the selections are held up more for analysis than enjoyment, even Madame d’Aulnoy’s “Babiole,” which makes for labored reading despite an eponymous princess who spends most of the tale as a monkey. Kusaite’s visual jumbles of patterns and textures are as mannered as the 19th-century prose.
Provocative fare for students of the themes and tropes of literary and traditional folk literature. (source notes) (Fairy tales. 14 & up)Pub Date: Sept. 14, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-8143-4069-1
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Wayne State Univ. Press
Review Posted Online: June 10, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2015
Categories: CHILDREN'S SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY
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