An often painful yet forthright tale of loss and healing in a time of war.
The Pritchard family comes to terms with the death of a family member in Turner’s (Rufus Steele 1940, 2010, etc.) latest emotionally charged tale.
When Walter Pritchard is killed in Afghanistan near the village of Kandahar, his belongings are carried to the Pritchard home in a series of numbered black boxes. Within each box are mementos of the man’s life, returned to his family by the military after being carefully catalogued and separated. Learning from the contents of the boxes, young Leah Pritchard slowly copes with the absence of her father while, within the household, her little brother Noah and mother Elise attempt to do the same. Short chapters, each containing kernels of Walter’s life, work as intriguing windows for the reader to peer into the lives of America’s war-torn families and those who died in service to their country. Here we see one particular serviceman’s world and how each cherished article within the black boxes shaped the tightly knit, loving family he left behind. Leah, who consoles herself by spending time alone with her father’s possessions, finds the collar of Clyde, the family’s Labrador, within box five. In box six she finds a nearly complete painting her father made of a young Afghan girl. In box 11, a journal she shared with her father. Box one, however, Elise keeps for herself. In time, Leah learns of its mundane contents and of her mother’s fervent need to remember her husband’s smell and touch during her own tumultuous recovery process. Turner’s style carries an alluring simplicity and offers no opinions on the war in Afghanistan, only in the way it affects the family of Walter Pritchard. Turner’s audience will likely find themselves mourning the death of Leah’s father with each chapter and subsequently learning how to live with the loss.
An often painful yet forthright tale of loss and healing in a time of war.Pub Date: June 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-0982284247
Page Count: 79
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Oct. 4, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Broccoli: No way is James going to eat broccoli. “It’s disgusting,” says James. Well then, James, says his father, let’s consider the alternatives: some wormy dirt, perhaps, some stinky socks, some pre-chewed gum? James reconsiders the broccoli, but—milk? “Blech,” says James. Right, says his father, who needs strong bones? You’ll be great at hide-and-seek, though not so great at baseball and kickball and even tickling the dog’s belly. James takes a mouthful. So it goes through lumpy oatmeal, mushroom lasagna and slimy eggs, with James’ father parrying his son’s every picky thrust. And it is fun, because the father’s retorts are so outlandish: the lasagna-making troll in the basement who will be sent back to the rat circus, there to endure the rodent’s vicious bites; the uneaten oatmeal that will grow and grow and probably devour the dog that the boy won’t be able to tickle any longer since his bones are so rubbery. Schneider’s watercolors catch the mood of gentle ribbing, the looks of bewilderment and surrender and the deadpanned malarkey. It all makes James’ father’s last urging—“I was just going to say that you might like them if you tried them”—wholly fresh and unexpected advice. (Early reader. 5-9)
Pub Date: May 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-547-14956-1
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Clarion Books
Review Posted Online: April 4, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2011
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The greening of Dr. Seuss, in an ecology fable with an obvious message but a savingly silly style. In the desolate land of the Lifted Lorax, an aged creature called the Once-ler tells a young visitor how he arrived long ago in the then glorious country and began manufacturing anomalous objects called Thneeds from "the bright-colored tufts of the Truffula Trees." Despite protests from the Lorax, a native "who speaks for the trees," he continues to chop down Truffulas until he drives away the Brown Bar-ba-loots who had fed on the Tuffula fruit, the Swomee-Swans who can't sing a note for the smogulous smoke, and the Humming-Fish who had hummed in the pond now glumped up with Gluppity-Glupp. As for the Once-let, "1 went right on biggering, selling more Thneeds./ And I biggered my money, which everyone needs" — until the last Truffula falls. But one seed is left, and the Once-let hands it to his listener, with a message from the Lorax: "UNLESS someone like you/ cares a whole awful lot,/ nothing is going to get better./ It's not." The spontaneous madness of the old Dr. Seuss is absent here, but so is the boredom he often induced (in parents, anyway) with one ridiculous invention after another. And if the Once-let doesn't match the Grinch for sheer irresistible cussedness, he is stealing a lot more than Christmas and his story just might induce a generation of six-year-olds to care a whole lot.
Pub Date: Aug. 12, 1971
ISBN: 0394823370
Page Count: 72
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Oct. 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1971
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