The San Diego community is horrified when their local television station announces that San Ramon Canyon, the place where they hike and enjoy local flora and fauna, is slated to be leveled for 95 luxury homes. Eleven-year-old Zach is the first to react, and with his family’s, neighborhood’s, and schoolmates’ support, he fights back with petitions and pleas presented to the disinterested local government. Zach uses his skill in photography to enhance a newspaper and television campaign, but succumbs to his best friend’s intimidation to use vandalism to slow the corporation’s efforts to get started on their lucrative project. Zach’s photography reveals that an endangered species lives on canyon property, which helps the “Save the Canyon” effort, but his acts of vandalism prey upon his mind until he comes up with an idea to give his precious baseball-card collection in partial payment for his mistake, sparking an advertising campaign on the Internet to persuade the corporation to trade its interest in the Canyon for massive numbers of nationally contributed baseball cards. Zach’s effort is heartwarming, but Cole’s text is weak due to frequent awkward phrasing, passive voice, and annoying clichés, and is so repetitious as to drag the plot to a standstill. Cole’s purposeful repetition allows everyone to reveal themselves, but this approach to introducing and building character fails, because her ultimate result is shallow. Though tedious, the plot feels real, until the conclusion abruptly ends with a deus ex machina: the grandfatherly owner of the Canyon property, hitherto unmentioned, pops up in the last chapter, forgives the vandalism, saves the canyon, and commits a large sum to making the canyon a dream come true for the whole community. On par with a bad made-for-television movie. (Fiction. 10-12)
Pub Date: May 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-688-17496-5
Page Count: 144
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2002
BOOK REVIEW
A world-class charmer, Clements (The Janitor’s Boy, 2000, etc.) woos aspiring young authors—as well as grown up publishers, editors, agents, parents, teachers, and even reviewers—with this tongue-in-cheek tale of a 12-year-old novelist’s triumphant debut. Sparked by a chance comment of her mother’s, a harried assistant editor for a (surely fictional) children’s imprint, Natalie draws on deep reserves of feeling and writing talent to create a moving story about a troubled schoolgirl and her father. First, it moves her pushy friend Zoe, who decides that it has to be published; then it moves a timorous, second-year English teacher into helping Zoe set up a virtual literary agency; then, submitted pseudonymously, it moves Natalie’s unsuspecting mother into peddling it to her waspish editor-in-chief. Depicting the world of children’s publishing as a delicious mix of idealism and office politics, Clements squires the manuscript past slush pile and contract, the editing process, and initial buzz (“The Cheater grabs hold of your heart and never lets go,” gushes Kirkus). Finally, in a tearful, joyous scene—carefully staged by Zoe, who turns out to be perfect agent material: cunning, loyal, devious, manipulative, utterly shameless—at the publication party, Natalie’s identity is revealed as news cameras roll. Selznick’s gnomic, realistic portraits at once reflect the tale’s droll undertone and deftly capture each character’s distinct personality. Terrific for flourishing school writing projects, this is practical as well as poignant. Indeed, it “grabs hold of yourheart and never lets go.” (Fiction. 10-12)
Pub Date: June 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-689-82594-3
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2001
“Hear, and listen well, my friends, and I will tell you a tale that has been told for a thousand years and more.” It’s not exactly a rarely told tale, either, though this complete rendition is distinguished by both handsome packaging and a prose narrative that artfully mixes alliterative language reminiscent of the original, with currently topical references to, for instance, Grendel’s “endless terror raids,” and the “holocaust at Heorot.” Along with being printed on heavy stock and surrounded by braided borders, the text is paired to colorful scenes featuring a small human warrior squaring off with a succession of grimacing but not very frightening monsters in battles marked by but a few discreet splashes of blood. Morpurgo puts his finger on the story’s enduring appeal—“we still fear the evil that stalks out there in the darkness . . . ”—but offers a version unlikely to trouble the sleep of more sensitive readers or listeners. (Fiction. 10-12)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-7636-3206-6
Page Count: 96
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2006
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