Geeder does make the association and learns to truly appreciate Zeely in an interlude of growing up successfully captured...
By the time you find out that Geeder (Elizabeth) and her younger brother Toeboy (John) are Negro it doesn't really matter anyway, although that fact is a part of their composite personalities and it does help to stress the extraordinary fascination Geeder felt for Zeely Taber.
For the duration of this short book Geeder is a fully realized young girl with the imagination and intuition consistent with her age and bounciness. Her surroundings can always be shared with her—the old farm with its antique-furnished house lovingly cared for by her Uncle Ross, the special aura of a summer vacation away from home, the complexities of travelling alone by train, her sibling superiority/tenderness toward Toeboy. A summer holiday is a time for revelations and Geeder's is Zeely Tabor, the six and one-half foot tall young woman who helps tend pigs on Uncle Ross' farm. From a pictorial magazine article Geeder jumps to the conclusion that Zeely is really a Watutsi queen, and in a rare moment of self-revelation Zeely indicates how non-royal she is. Zeely's time of day is the night, and at one point Uncle Ross reflects that "a night traveller must be somebody who wants to walk tall. And to walk tall, you most certainly must have to run free...it is the free spirit in any of us breaking loose."
Geeder does make the association and learns to truly appreciate Zeely in an interlude of growing up successfully captured here. (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Feb. 1, 1966
ISBN: 1416914137
Page Count: 132
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 26, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1966
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Eminently readable and appealing; will tug at dog-loving readers’ heartstrings.
A loquacious, lovable dog narrates the challenges of shelter life as he longs for a home.
Friendly three-legged Chance is the perfect guide to Dogtown, a shelter that houses both warmblooded and robot dogs. In fact, she’s “Management’s lucky charm,” roaming freely without being confined to a cage and leaving kibble for her mouse friend. Life is pretty good. But she still yearns for reunification with her family and, like many of the living pups, harbors suspicion of her robot counterparts, who are convenient and more easily adoptable but lacking in personality. When Metal Head, an oddly engineered e-dog, bonds with a child during a shelter reading program, Chance’s assumptions about heartless robot dogs are upended. As Chance connects with Metal Head, the two make a brief escape into the wider world, and Chance learns a familiar lesson: Everyone longs for a place to belong. Memories of Chance’s happy home loom large in her mind: Easy days with the Bessers, a sweet Black family, were disrupted by a neglectful dogsitter, the accident that cost Chance her leg, and Chance’s flight in search of safety. Chance’s chatty narrative style includes flashbacks, vignettes about fellow shelter pets, and thoughtful observations, for example, about the “boohoos,” or sad new arrivals. The story offers many moments of laughter and reflection, all greatly enhanced by West’s utterly charming grayscale illustrations of irresistible pooches.
Eminently readable and appealing; will tug at dog-loving readers’ heartstrings. (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Sept. 19, 2023
ISBN: 9781250811608
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Feiwel & Friends
Review Posted Online: July 13, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2023
Strong characters grapple with a multitude of issues (a few too many) in this celebration of friendship and the rewards of...
Are there secrets that shouldn’t be revealed?
In this sequel to The Perfect Score (2017), Randi, Natalie, Gavin, Trevor, and Scott are assigned community service for cheating on a standardized test. It’s not really a punishment, as these good-natured students enjoy working in the senior center where they’ve established relationships, and besides, they want to reconcile two of their teachers, a mother and daughter, before it’s too late. As before, narration alternates among the five, and while their characters are well-developed, the various issues are examined lightly. In this case, many are related to secrecy, from budding romance to absentee fathers, familial estrangement, parental marital problems, financial struggle, Alzheimer’s, brain injury, adult illiteracy, immigration, and racism. The last three revolve around Gavin, whose Mexican-immigrant mother is undocumented and who becomes the target of the racist football coach. Aside from biracial Gavin and his mother, the book adheres to the white default. Though handled with kindness and compassion, the sheer abundance of topics results in oversimplification, and every story has a pat ending, which, cumulatively, seems unlikely. Still, the characters shine, the plots are engaging, and the issues are addressed in interesting ways that will provide readers with many perspectives and much to consider.
Strong characters grapple with a multitude of issues (a few too many) in this celebration of friendship and the rewards of volunteer work. (Fiction. 9-12)Pub Date: Oct. 9, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5247-6459-3
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: July 15, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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