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 Kat, 13, whose mother died of cancer, has withdrawn from the world.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
The first in the News Hounds geography series opens with chatty instructions from Axelrod (Pigs on the Ball, 1998, etc.) on how to read the book—first for fun, and then for education. Instructions, and the need to instruct, may be the book’s main flaw. The book earnestly assures parents and teachers that the series has been designed around five fundamental themes set forth by the National Council of Geography Education and the Association of American Geographers. Any readers still left in the room can then begin the story, involving press coverage of a hot-air balloon race in Texas by a roving three-person TV news team, all of them dogs. Gear packed, the reporters hop into the news van, which is driven by the weather girl, a golden retriever with long, silky ears, who in a nifty bit of sexist characterization stops to shop. They get to the airfield in time to shoot opening footage and anchorman Isaac reels off copy that will tax beginning readers. There is more, but this kind of book may put readers off geography permanently. (Picture book. 6-9)
Pub Date: March 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-689-82409-2
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2000
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
This sprightly rhyming excursion into buying power puts lie to the notion that economics is by nature a dreary topic. When the first-person narrator is given a raise in allowance, visions of new purchases fill her head. As she shops the store’s candy, toy, deli, and pet departments, she is overwhelmed by the multiplicity of deals offered by eager merchants—ample opportunity to figure out the best deal mathematically. “A penny for your thoughts,” says one merchant as the girl opts for something really unusual—to spend not a cent, and to tuck her money into a bank at home, but only after a nicely turned pitch of her own: “Why you can have one hundred/of my thoughts for a dollar!/Ten thoughts for a dime,/five for a nickel/twenty-five thoughts/for a sour dill pickle.” If the value of money is in its possibilities, rather than its purchases, readers, too, will be relieved when the girl leaves the store. Lin’s illustrations make the mayhem memorable in an easy book to pair with Jon Scieszka and Lane Smith’s Math Curse (1995). (Picture book. 5-9)
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-88106-294-4
Page Count: 32
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2000
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