Even though the ending comes too fast and too tidily after so much soul-stirring grief, the story features some lovely...
The difference between wanting and needing can be as slight as the breath off a midnight swamp or as vast as a torrent of floodwater.
Piontek weaves a heartbreaking tale of loss infused with the nearly suffocating weight of longing, need, and absence. The death of Mama leaves young Sparrow in the care of tall, thin, and emotionally brittle Auntie Geraldine. Sparrow has never known her father, and in her small Florida town where her home sat pressed against the Everglades, rumor was the dark-haired girl was the spawn of the swamp itself. Long as Mama lived, Sparrow accepted her outsider status. With Mama gone, Sparrow finds herself engulfed in a grief as stifling as summer humidity. Sparrow’s only companion is the ghostly Boy who has been part of her life as long as she can remember, until at last she begins to make some living friends. Piontek spins a gothic ghost tale, delivering it in a lyrical narrative that threatens to overwhelm readers as sure as a blanket of Florida summer heat. Sparrow and her friends are white, not unusual in Beulah, Florida, whose social stratifications include unspoken segregation.
Even though the ending comes too fast and too tidily after so much soul-stirring grief, the story features some lovely writing, and it’s full of characters who linger like apparitions . (Fantasy. 10-14)Pub Date: May 29, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-338-16705-4
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Feb. 18, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
Some readers may feel that the resolution comes a mite too easily, but most will enjoy the journey and be pleased when...
Two sisters make an unauthorized expedition to their former hometown and in the process bring together the two parts of their divided family.
Dooley packs plenty of emotion into this eventful road trip, which takes place over the course of less than 24 hours. Twelve-year-old Ophelia, nicknamed Fella, and her 16-year-old sister, Zoey Grace, aka Zany, are the daughters of a lesbian couple, Shannon and Lacy, who could not legally marry. The two white girls squabble and share memories as they travel from West Virginia to Asheville, North Carolina, where Zany is determined to scatter Mama Lacy’s ashes in accordance with her wishes. The year is 2004, before the Supreme Court decision on gay marriage, and the girls have been separated by hostile, antediluvian custodial laws. Fella’s present-tense narration paints pictures not just of the difficulties they face on the trip (a snowstorm, car trouble, and an unlikely thief among them), but also of their lives before Mama Lacy’s illness and of the ways that things have changed since then. Breathless and engaging, Fella’s distinctive voice is convincingly childlike. The conversations she has with her sister, as well as her insights about their relationship, likewise ring true. While the girls face serious issues, amusing details and the caring adults in their lives keep the tone relatively light.
Some readers may feel that the resolution comes a mite too easily, but most will enjoy the journey and be pleased when Fella’s family figures out how to come together in a new way . (Historical fiction. 10-14)Pub Date: April 4, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-399-16504-7
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: Jan. 31, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
A sly, side-splitting hoot from start to finish.
The dreary prospect of spending a lifetime making caskets instead of wonderful inventions prompts a young orphan to snatch up his little sister and flee. Where? To the circus, of course.
Fortunately or otherwise, John and 6-year-old Page join up with Boz—sometime human cannonball for the seedy Wandering Wayfarers and a “vertically challenged” trickster with a fantastic gift for sowing chaos. Alas, the budding engineer barely has time to settle in to begin work on an experimental circus wagon powered by chicken poop and dubbed (with questionable forethought) the Autopsy. The hot pursuit of malign and indomitable Great-Aunt Beauregard, the Coggins’ only living relative, forces all three to leave the troupe for further flights and misadventures. Teele spins her adventure around a sturdy protagonist whose love for his little sister is matched only by his fierce desire for something better in life for them both and tucks in an outstanding supporting cast featuring several notably strong-minded, independent women (Page, whose glare “would kill spiders dead,” not least among them). Better yet, in Boz she has created a scene-stealing force of nature, a free spirit who’s never happier than when he’s stirring up mischief. A climactic clutch culminating in a magnificently destructive display of fireworks leaves the Coggin sibs well-positioned for bright futures. (Illustrations not seen.)
A sly, side-splitting hoot from start to finish. (Adventure. 11-13)Pub Date: April 12, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-06-234510-3
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Walden Pond Press/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
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