Skip. (Fiction. 9-11)
Sophie, a 10-year-old with a facial birthmark, sees monsters everywhere she looks—including in the mirror.
Sophie has a hemangioma, a textured birthmark across her face. A frequent victim of bullying, Sophie hides from the world behind sunglasses or her hair. Her mother moves them both from the Portland, Oregon, suburbs to the city, where she hopes specialists will be able to surgically remove Sophie’s birthmark and Sophie can get a fresh start at a new school. The fresh start works, a little. Sophie makes her first friend, a bubbly girl named Autumn. But Sophie’s demons are all too real. Constantly reading her Big Book of Monsters (which mixes monsters and figures from various world cosmologies), Sophie sees creatures everywhere. Most are dangerous but not all: Autumn is obviously a fairy, while Autumn’s Irish herbalist grandmother is a kindly witch. Sophie decides to remove the curse she’s sure has afflicted her, finding ingredients for a magical cure all over Portland while identifying “the ghost of a Native American princess” and “an old Native American man” in passers-by and deciding they’re her magical helpers. The message—that true beauty comes from the inside—is worthy but unremarkable and is ultimately undermined by tired disability tropes. The mishmash of monstrosity and magic with world religions is as unfortunate as the placement of generic Native characters in the service of this white girl; that she has a Latina doctor would be nice except that the highly atypical spelling of her doctor’s surname (“Escabar”) will likely throw Latinx readers.
Skip. (Fiction. 9-11)Pub Date: March 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-62972-555-0
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Shadow Mountain
Review Posted Online: Jan. 14, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Medically, both squicky and hopeful; emotionally, unbelievably squeaky-clean.
A 12-year-old copes with a brain tumor.
Maddie likes potatoes and fake mustaches. Kids at school are nice (except one whom readers will see instantly is a bully); soon they’ll get to perform Shakespeare scenes in a unit they’ve all been looking forward to. But recent dysfunctions in Maddie’s arm and leg mean, stunningly, that she has a brain tumor. She has two surgeries, the first successful, the second taking place after the book’s end, leaving readers hanging. The tumor’s not malignant, but it—or the surgeries—could cause sight loss, personality change, or death. The descriptions of surgery aren’t for the faint of heart. The authors—parents of a real-life Maddie who really had a brain tumor—imbue fictional Maddie’s first-person narration with quirky turns of phrase (“For the love of potatoes!”) and whimsy (she imagines her medical battles as epic fantasy fights and pretends MRI stands for Mustard Rat from Indiana or Mustaches Rock Importantly), but they also portray her as a model sick kid. She’s frightened but never acts out, snaps, or resists. Her most frequent commentary about the tumor, having her skull opened, and the possibility of death is “Boo” or “Super boo.” She even shoulders the bully’s redemption. Maddie and most characters are white; one cringe-inducing hallucinatory surgery dream involves “chanting island natives” and a “witch doctor lady.”
Medically, both squicky and hopeful; emotionally, unbelievably squeaky-clean. (authors’ note, discussion questions) (Fiction. 9-11)Pub Date: Oct. 3, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-62972-330-3
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Shadow Mountain
Review Posted Online: Aug. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
However the compelling fitness of theme and event and the apt but unexpected imagery (the opening sentences compare the...
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
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf
