Hamilton's clean, spare style delights and surprises with its unexpected melodies and insights.
Winner of an impressive number of prizes, including a Newbery and two Coretta Scott King awards, Hamilton is at home in biography, folklore, and fantasy; here, in a sequel to The House of Dies Drear (1968), she returns to realistic fiction with roots in the past of both family and place.
Thomas Small and his family inhabit the old Drear house, keeping secret the tunnel, fabulous treasure, and Underground Railway hideaway discovered in the earlier book. Old Plato still lives nearby in a cave that conceals an entrance to the tunnel; and Thomas still thinks of the neighboring Darrow men as enemies, though Pesty Darrow is a friend and Macky might become one. The Darrows have been seeking the rumored treasure for generations. Unexpectedly, Mrs. Darrow, an awe-inspiring recluse whose mind is trapped burrowing in the past as others might be caught burrowing in Drear's perilous historic tunnels, makes her way through a tunnel that the Smalls were unaware of, into their dwelling. Now everyone has secrets to defend; and in order to save the historic treasure from looting and its searchers and defenders from the tunnels' dangers, Mr. Small (a history professor) goes public with the find, effectively both preserving it and realigning his family and the Darrows in a tentative friendship. On one level, this is an accessible tale of an exciting discovery, lively with conversation and action. But Hamilton's stories are always complex, multileveled. The muted contrast among three families of diverse ages, education and status, while emphasizing their common humanity; the historical undercurrent surfacing in Mrs. Darrow's tragic story of an Indian girl who lost her life while failing to save a group of orphans from slavers; and the intricacies of ownership and use of whatever treasures there may be, and their effect on owners or users, are among the themes to ponder here.
Hamilton's clean, spare style delights and surprises with its unexpected melodies and insights. (Mystery. 8-12)Pub Date: March 16, 1987
ISBN: 0590956272
Page Count: 228
Publisher: Greenwillow Books
Review Posted Online: Oct. 26, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1987
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A fast and funny alternative to the Wimpy Kid.
Black sixth-grader Jake Liston can only play one song on the piano. He can’t read music very well, and he can’t improvise. So how did Jake get accepted to the Music and Art Academy? He faked it.
Alongside an eclectic group of academy classmates, and with advice from his best friend, Jake tries to fit in at a school where things like garbage sculpting and writing art reviews of bird poop splatter are the norm. All is well until Jake discovers that the end-of-the-semester talent show is only two weeks away, and Jake is short one very important thing…talent. Or is he? It’s up to Jake to either find the talent that lies within or embarrass himself in front of the entire school. Light and humorous, with Knight’s illustrations adding to the fun, Jake’s story will likely appeal to many middle-grade readers, especially those who might otherwise be reluctant to pick up a book. While the artsy antics may be over-the-top at times, this is a story about something that most preteens can relate to: the struggle to find your authentic self. And in a world filled with books about wanting to fit in with the athletically gifted supercliques, this novel unabashedly celebrates the artsy crowd in all of its quirky, creative glory.
A fast and funny alternative to the Wimpy Kid. (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: March 28, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-553-52351-5
Page Count: 144
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Dec. 5, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2016
Alert readers will find the implicit morals: know your audience, mostly, but also never underestimate the power of “rock”...
The theme of persistence (for better or worse) links four tales of magic, trickery, and near disasters.
Lachenmeyer freely borrows familiar folkloric elements, subjecting them to mildly comical twists. In the nearly wordless “Hip Hop Wish,” a frog inadvertently rubs a magic lamp and finds itself saddled with an importunate genie eager to shower it with inappropriate goods and riches. In the title tale, an increasingly annoyed music-hating witch transforms a persistent minstrel into a still-warbling cow, horse, sheep, goat, pig, duck, and rock in succession—then is horrified to catch herself humming a tune. Athesius the sorcerer outwits Warthius, a rival trying to steal his spells via a parrot, by casting silly ones in Ig-pay Atin-lay in the third episode, and in the finale, a painter’s repeated efforts to create a flattering portrait of an ogre king nearly get him thrown into a dungeon…until he suddenly understands what an ogre’s idea of “flattering” might be. The narratives, dialogue, and sound effects leave plenty of elbow room in Blocker’s big, brightly colored panels for the expressive animal and human(ish) figures—most of the latter being light skinned except for the golden genie, the blue ogre, and several people of color in the “Sorcerer’s New Pet.”
Alert readers will find the implicit morals: know your audience, mostly, but also never underestimate the power of “rock” music. (Graphic short stories. 8-10)Pub Date: June 18, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-59643-750-0
Page Count: 112
Publisher: First Second
Review Posted Online: April 27, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2019
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