A boy helps his ailing grandfather go home one last time in this Swedish import.
Gottfried finds life enlivened by his feisty grandfather, who’s always been “difficult.” They are true kindred spirits. Confined now to the hospital with a broken leg and weak heart, Grandpa’s “worse than ever.” Gottfried’s dad avoids hospital visits because Grandpa’s naughty behavior and declining condition make him “tired and sad.” He rejects Gottfried’s plea to bring Grandpa to live with them, insisting he’s “too sick and angry and stubborn and crazy.” Pretending to be at football training, Gottfried visits Grandpa in the hospital and suggests they should run away. Lying to his parents about where he’s going overnight, Gottfried surreptitiously transports Grandpa to the island house where he lived with Grandma until she died. Back home for one night, Grandpa happily reverts to his old clothes, savors Grandma’s last jar of lingonberry jam, and says farewell to his old life before returning to the hospital. Gottfried’s accessible, unadorned, heartfelt first-person narration reveals the depth of his bond with his grandfather as well as his insightful understanding of his father’s limitations. Linear, colored-pencil drawings capture key interactions between characters and revel in Grandpa’s choler. Characters are white (or, in Grandpa’s case, grouchily pink).
A touching, realistic, gently humorous story of how a sensitive boy copes with his treasured grandfather’s decline. (Fiction. 8-11)Pub Date: April 2, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-776572-33-5
Page Count: 144
Publisher: Gecko Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 28, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2019
Categories: CHILDREN'S SOCIAL THEMES | CHILDREN'S FAMILY
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BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
Categories: CHILDREN'S SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY | CHILDREN'S SOCIAL THEMES
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This sequel to The Lemonade War (2007), picking up just a few days later, focuses on how the fourth graders take justice into their own hands after learning that the main suspect in the case of the missing lemonade-stand money now owns the latest in game-box technology.
Siblings Evan and Jessie (who skipped third grade because of her precocity) are sure Scott Spencer stole the $208 from Evan’s shorts and want revenge, especially as Scott’s new toy makes him the most popular kid in class, despite his personal shortcomings. Jessie’s solution is to orchestrate a full-blown trial by jury after school, while Evan prefers to challenge Scott in basketball. Neither channel proves satisfactory for the two protagonists (whose rational and emotional reactions are followed throughout the third-person narrative), though, ultimately, the matter is resolved. Set during the week of Yom Kippur, the story raises beginning questions of fairness, integrity, sin and atonement. Like John Grisham's Theodore Boone, Kid Lawyer (2010), much of the book is taken up with introducing courtroom proceedings for a fourth-grade level of understanding. Chapter headings provide definitions (“due diligence,” “circumstantial evidence,” etc.) and explanation cards/documents drawn by Jessie are interspersed.
Readers will enjoy this sequel from a plot perspective and will learn how to play-act a trial, though they may not engage with the characters enough to care about how the justice actually pans out. (Fiction. 8-10)Pub Date: May 2, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-547-27967-1
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: April 5, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2011
Categories: CHILDREN'S FAMILY
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