At 12, Destiny Louise Capperson is the most competent member of her impoverished dysfunctional family. Her psychic-dependent mother is so sadly eccentric that when the family’s phone is disconnected, her response is “What do they expect people to do in emergencies? . . . Just hope a psychic happens to drop in right off the street?” Along with her mother, Destiny lives with her mother’s mean-spirited, disreputable boyfriend and her simply but sharply defined half-siblings in a small house bought with an insurance windfall gained when her brother’s “legs got crunched by the bad lady” in a car accident. To help make ends meet, Destiny seeks employment with Mrs. Peck, a retired teacher whose eyesight is failing but whose prodigious memory and ethical standards are blessedly intact. Stiff-backed yet courteous and respectful, Mrs. Peck introduces Destiny to the intellectually invigorating world of classical mythology and the concepts it embodies. But when she learns that Mrs. Peck may not be as perfect as she had imagined, Destiny slips up, then has to negotiate a moral crisis of her own making. Although Grove’s book has more coincidences than it can sustain and resolves too neatly, it’s full of lyrical prose, vibrant, gracefully detailed characters and a message of hope for the future. As Mrs. Peck tells Destiny, “To hope is to look yourself in the eye and realize that you’re capable of doing and being anything you really want to in this imperfect but fascinating world.” (Fiction.10-12)
Pub Date: June 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-399-23449-7
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2000
Curtis debuts with a ten-year-old's lively account of his teenaged brother's ups and downs. Ken tries to make brother Byron out to be a real juvenile delinquent, but he comes across as more of a comic figure: getting stuck to the car when he kisses his image in a frozen side mirror, terrorized by his mother when she catches him playing with matches in the bathroom, earning a shaved head by coming home with a conk. In between, he defends Ken from a bully and buries a bird he kills by accident. Nonetheless, his parents decide that only a long stay with tough Grandma Sands will turn him around, so they all motor from Michigan to Alabama, arriving in time to witness the infamous September bombing of a Sunday school. Ken is funny and intelligent, but he gives readers a clearer sense of Byron's character than his own and seems strangely unaffected by his isolation and harassment (for his odd look—he has a lazy eye—and high reading level) at school. Curtis tries to shoehorn in more characters and subplots than the story will comfortably bear—as do many first novelists—but he creates a well-knit family and a narrator with a distinct, believable voice. (Fiction. 10-12)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-385-32175-9
Page Count: 210
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1995
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PLB 0-7868-2427-1 The content and concerns of Levy’s latest is at odds with the young reading level and large type size, which may prevent this novel’s natural audience of middle schoolers from finding a fast and funny read. In sixth grade, Rebecca broke her friend Scott’s toe at a dance. Now, in seventh grade, they are partners in a ballroom dance class, and they soon find they dance well together, but that makes Rebecca’s friend Samantha jealous. She gives a party during which spin-the-bottle is played, kissing Scott and then bullying him into being her boyfriend. While Rebecca deals with her mixed feelings about all this, she also has a crush on her dance instructor. Levy (My Life as a Fifth-Grade Comedian, 1997, etc.) has great comedic timing and writes with a depth of feeling to make early adolescent romantic travails engaging; she also comes through on the equally difficult feat of making ballroom dancing appealing to young teens. The obsession with kissing, pre-sexual tension, and sensuality of the dancing will be off-putting or engrossing, depending entirely on readers’ comfort levels with such conversations in real life as well as on the page. Precocious preteens will find that this humorously empathetic take on budding romance is just right. (Fiction. 10-12)
Pub Date: March 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-7868-0498-X
Page Count: 154
Publisher: Hyperion
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2000
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