Beckhorn (In the Morning of the World, not reviewed) gives the heartstrings a real workout in a tale replete with characters nursing private grief. Six months after her beloved father’s death, and with her mother off to a European rest cure in the wake of a nervous breakdown, 12-year-old Franny arrives at her Grandma Morrow’s country house. She’s deep in denial, accompanied by the fairies of her father’s tales (visible only to her), and bearing severe burns she got while attempting to rescue those stories after her mother pitched them into a fire. It soon becomes obvious that Grandmother, the widowed chauffeur Henry, and the Irish maid Ida all have sad secrets—which come out in a climactic rush after Franny’s discovery of a display of mounted, all-too-fairy-like luna moths shatters her fragile composure. Ida’s admission of a baby given up for adoption prompts Grandma Morrow, who has a similar experience in her own past, to rush out to reclaim it; she returns with a foundling, which she presents to Ida as hers. It isn’t, but only Franny, her grandma, and Henry, who is in love with Ida, know the truth. This rather cavalier deception doesn’t bear much examination, but there are tender and tearful moments aplenty here. Franny and her mother are reconciled by the end, and though, unlike the Little Folk in Janet Taylor Lisle’s Afternoon of the Elves (1989), Franny’s fairies put in repeat appearances, and readers are still left with the option of believing that they’re real—or not. (Fiction. 11-13)
Pub Date: May 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-399-23712-7
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Philomel
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2002
BOOK REVIEW
Ultimately more than a little full of itself, but well-stocked with big themes, inventively spun fairy-tale tropes, and...
Good has won every fairy-tale contest with Evil for centuries, but a dark sorcerer’s scheme to turn the tables comes to fruition in this ponderous closer.
Broadening conflict swirls around frenemies Agatha and Sophie as the latter joins rejuvenated School Master Rafal, who has dispatched an army of villains from Capt. Hook to various evil stepmothers to take stabs (literally) at changing the ends of their stories. Meanwhile, amid a general slaughter of dwarves and billy goats, Agatha and her rigid but educable true love, Tedros, flee for protection to the League of Thirteen. This turns out to be a company of geriatric versions of characters, from Hansel and Gretel (in wheelchairs) to fat and shrewish Cinderella, led by an enigmatic Merlin. As the tale moves slowly toward climactic battles and choices, Chainani further lightens the load by stuffing it with memes ranging from a magic ring that must be destroyed and a “maleficent” gown for Sophie to this oddly familiar line: “Of all the tales in all the kingdoms in all the Woods, you had to walk into mine.” Rafal’s plan turns out to be an attempt to prove that love can be twisted into an instrument of Evil. Though the proposition eventually founders on the twin rocks of true friendship and family ties, talk of “balance” in the aftermath at least promises to give Evil a fighting chance in future fairy tales. Bruno’s polished vignettes at each chapter’s head and elsewhere add sophisticated visual notes.
Ultimately more than a little full of itself, but well-stocked with big themes, inventively spun fairy-tale tropes, and flashes of hilarity. (Fantasy. 11-13)Pub Date: July 21, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-06-210495-3
Page Count: 672
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 25, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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