A novel that skillfully pits a teenager against nearly insurmountable sorrows following the death of her mother. Kat, 13, whose mother died of cancer, has withdrawn from the world. As she tries to ignore her old friends, she makes a new one in the General, an elderly man who feeds pigeons and lives in a fantasy. Kat finds she can’t avoid her old friends entirely; she still sees her best friend, Maggie, who believes that a next-door neighbor, Mrs. Twitchell, is a malevolent witch, a notion Kat accepts. Calamity strikes again when Maggie is injured in a hit-and-run accident; the General is the guilty driver. Kat loses her only remaining friend, Paul, when she tries to defend the General. Only a strict teacher, Sister Mildred, offers any sympathy, but it’s not until Kat falls off a ledge and into Mrs. Twitchell’s apartment does she learn that everyone has some tragedy, and that life can be good when it is faced with courage. Golding displays solid knowledge of adolescent girls, and her story has enough excitement and mystery to interest many of them. (Fiction. 10-14)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1999
ISBN: 1-56397-755-9
Page Count: 179
Publisher: Boyds Mills
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1999
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
As she lovingly details the comfortable disarray of a perfectly splendid staircase, a small mouse counts off the stairs in a game she has clearly played many times. The rhyme skips and leaps from “First step. Rain step,” because that’s where her puddle boots are, to the third step, where the window seat is, to the sixth, where she can peer into her own bedroom, to the eleventh where the night light lives, and the twelfth where she can go back down and start again. She’s accompanied by her little sister and readers catch a glimpse at the end of a mother, father, and baby, too. The details are whimsical, and the rhyme infectious. A real treat, perfectly centered on a small child’s perceptions and experience. (Picture book. 3-7)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1999
ISBN: 1-886910-34-0
Page Count: 32
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1999
In this visual feast from Lesser and Regan (Dig Hole, Soft Mole, 1996), so striking are the oil and gouache wildlife portraits that, despite the counting book framework, numbers are nearly an afterthought. Every spread has a you-are-there quality, as if readers are peering into a rock-strewn stream to spy six fire salamanders or scuba diving alongside one leopard ray in the murky blue. The book opens with an invitation—“Spotted creatures/wait for you. Snoop and find them/count them, too”—as Lesser toys with language, using active verbs to describe the kinds of spots found on each animal: “Staring, rippling, jetting spots” dapple five reef squid; “loping, gazing, nibbling spots” grace seven reticulated giraffes. Although spots are the unifying theme, the creatures have been carefully selected not only for their markings but for their habitats or biomes, identified and outlined in a final glossary. (Picture book. 4-8)
Pub Date: March 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-15-200666-4
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1999
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