Jamie isn't looking forward to starting sixth grade at her 10th school since kindergarten (her 11th if you count the two...
When Jamie carves out her own niche in the social hierarchy, she makes quite a splash.
Jamie isn't looking forward to starting sixth grade at her 10th school since kindergarten (her 11th if you count the two days she spent at Magley Wood Elementary before she was expelled). Her mother swears that this time they'll stay in one place long enough for her to make friends. “Be whatever you want to be!” her grandmother says in a rare lucid moment. Confronted with school clubs populated by mean, popular girls, Jamie forms her own club: The Outcasts, for kids “the weirder the better.” The club members have quirks aplenty: a glass eye, 12 toes, nine body piercings. One member has four mothers and three fathers, while another escaped her homeland as a refugee. Club outings are sweetly kooky, ranging from a private showing of demolition-derby practice to an afternoon volunteering at a shelter. Their popularity grows, and the Outcasts turn away many would-be weirdos (sadly, without ever examining the hypocrisy of being outcasts who exclude perfectly nice classmates for being "just average, regular kids"). The principal, cartoonishly mean, seethes at this disruption of the social order, and demands the Outcasts disband.Pub Date: July 20, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-930773-97-7
Page Count: 179
Publisher: Black Heron
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2011
However the compelling fitness of theme and event and the apt but unexpected imagery (the opening sentences compare the...
At a time when death has become an acceptable, even voguish subject in children's fiction, Natalie Babbitt comes through with a stylistic gem about living forever.
Protected Winnie, the ten-year-old heroine, is not immortal, but when she comes upon young Jesse Tuck drinking from a secret spring in her parents' woods, she finds herself involved with a family who, having innocently drunk the same water some 87 years earlier, haven't aged a moment since. Though the mood is delicate, there is no lack of action, with the Tucks (previously suspected of witchcraft) now pursued for kidnapping Winnie; Mae Tuck, the middle aged mother, striking and killing a stranger who is onto their secret and would sell the water; and Winnie taking Mae's place in prison so that the Tucks can get away before she is hanged from the neck until....? Though Babbitt makes the family a sad one, most of their reasons for discontent are circumstantial and there isn't a great deal of wisdom to be gleaned from their fate or Winnie's decision not to share it.
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1975
ISBN: 0312369816
Page Count: 164
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: April 13, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1975
Medically, both squicky and hopeful; emotionally, unbelievably squeaky-clean.
A 12-year-old copes with a brain tumor.
Maddie likes potatoes and fake mustaches. Kids at school are nice (except one whom readers will see instantly is a bully); soon they’ll get to perform Shakespeare scenes in a unit they’ve all been looking forward to. But recent dysfunctions in Maddie’s arm and leg mean, stunningly, that she has a brain tumor. She has two surgeries, the first successful, the second taking place after the book’s end, leaving readers hanging. The tumor’s not malignant, but it—or the surgeries—could cause sight loss, personality change, or death. The descriptions of surgery aren’t for the faint of heart. The authors—parents of a real-life Maddie who really had a brain tumor—imbue fictional Maddie’s first-person narration with quirky turns of phrase (“For the love of potatoes!”) and whimsy (she imagines her medical battles as epic fantasy fights and pretends MRI stands for Mustard Rat from Indiana or Mustaches Rock Importantly), but they also portray her as a model sick kid. She’s frightened but never acts out, snaps, or resists. Her most frequent commentary about the tumor, having her skull opened, and the possibility of death is “Boo” or “Super boo.” She even shoulders the bully’s redemption. Maddie and most characters are white; one cringe-inducing hallucinatory surgery dream involves “chanting island natives” and a “witch doctor lady.”
Medically, both squicky and hopeful; emotionally, unbelievably squeaky-clean. (authors’ note, discussion questions) (Fiction. 9-11)Pub Date: Oct. 3, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-62972-330-3
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Shadow Mountain
Review Posted Online: Aug. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2017
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