Sleator did so well with the medieval haunted house Blackbriar (KR, 1972) that it's a shame to see him fumble in an attempt to inject some contemporary relevance into a well paced suspense melodrama. Fifteen year-old Lillian, scared by the prospect of spending a few days alone in her family's isolated summer house, manages to convince two young cyclists who are caught in a rainstorm to stay overnight. While one of the boys, Mark, frets about moving on and Lillian and Jerry enjoy cooking lunch and tasting a bottle of wine snitched from the cellar, evidence that the house is being watched begins to accumulate — a missing radio, a mysterious shape in the bushes, a midnight intruder who apologizes for scaring Lillian. So far, so good. But when the trio does surprise the stranger in the act of stealing an electric saw, the thief returns and launches into a remorseful confession — he's "not a real criminal at all," just an addict trying to support a 150 dollar a day habit. Without denying that addicts are victims, this particular junkie's irregular method of operation (why does he steal one item at a time, and how does he dispose of them?) and his immediate rapport with the three young people seems farfetched ("you're beautiful," he tells them, when he learns that they haven't reported their suspicions to the police). And his death minutes later at the hands of a suburban lynch mob turns the thief into a martyr, the neighboring property owners into hysterical murderers, and leaves the children filled with regret that they didn't call the kindly police chief at the first sign of trouble. In the rush towards a dramatic ending, somehow an innocuous message about irrational fears and sympathy for the underdog turn into a liberal guilt fantasy, and Sleator's inability to give speech or substance to non-middle class characters — whether junkie or cop — becomes painfully obvious.
Pub Date: April 17, 1973
ISBN: 0590317679
Page Count: 148
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: May 9, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1973
Categories: CHILDREN'S GENERAL CHILDREN'S
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The greening of Dr. Seuss, in an ecology fable with an obvious message but a savingly silly style. In the desolate land of the Lifted Lorax, an aged creature called the Once-ler tells a young visitor how he arrived long ago in the then glorious country and began manufacturing anomalous objects called Thneeds from "the bright-colored tufts of the Truffula Trees." Despite protests from the Lorax, a native "who speaks for the trees," he continues to chop down Truffulas until he drives away the Brown Bar-ba-loots who had fed on the Tuffula fruit, the Swomee-Swans who can't sing a note for the smogulous smoke, and the Humming-Fish who had hummed in the pond now glumped up with Gluppity-Glupp. As for the Once-let, "1 went right on biggering, selling more Thneeds./ And I biggered my money, which everyone needs" — until the last Truffula falls. But one seed is left, and the Once-let hands it to his listener, with a message from the Lorax: "UNLESS someone like you/ cares a whole awful lot,/ nothing is going to get better./ It's not." The spontaneous madness of the old Dr. Seuss is absent here, but so is the boredom he often induced (in parents, anyway) with one ridiculous invention after another. And if the Once-let doesn't match the Grinch for sheer irresistible cussedness, he is stealing a lot more than Christmas and his story just might induce a generation of six-year-olds to care a whole lot.
Pub Date: Aug. 12, 1971
ISBN: 0394823370
Page Count: 72
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Oct. 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1971
Categories: CHILDREN'S GENERAL CHILDREN'S | CHILDREN'S SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
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A 15-year-old girl in Colombia, doing time in a remote detention center, orchestrates a jail break and tries to get home.
"People say drugs and alcohol are the greatest and most persuasive narcotics—the elements most likely to ruin a life. They're wrong. It's love." As the U.S. recovers from the repeal of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, from the misery of separations on the border, from both the idea and the reality of a wall around the United States, Engel's vital story of a divided Colombian family is a book we need to read. Weaving Andean myth and natural symbolism into her narrative—condors signify mating for life, jaguars revenge; the embattled Colombians are "a singed species of birds without feathers who can still fly"; children born in one country and raised in another are "repotted flowers, creatures forced to live in the wrong habitat"—she follows Talia, the youngest child, on a complex journey. Having committed a violent crime not long before she was scheduled to leave her father in Bogotá to join her mother and siblings in New Jersey, she winds up in a horrible Catholic juvie from which she must escape in order to make her plane. Hence the book's wonderful first sentence: "It was her idea to tie up the nun." Talia's cross-country journey is interwoven with the story of her parents' early romance, their migration to the United States, her father's deportation, her grandmother's death, the struggle to reunite. In the latter third of the book, surprising narrative shifts are made to include the voices of Talia's siblings, raised in the U.S. This provides interesting new perspectives, but it is a little awkward to break the fourth wall so late in the book. Attention, TV and movie people: This story is made for the screen.
The rare immigrant chronicle that is as long on hope as it is on heartbreak.Pub Date: March 2, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-982159-46-7
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Avid Reader Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 15, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2021
Categories: LITERARY FICTION | FAMILY LIFE & FRIENDSHIP
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SEEN & HEARD
After an eight-year interval, a Beginner Book by this well-loved originator of the series is welcome; and since Seuss hasn't chosen to illustrate it himself, we are lucky to have Stevenson as alternate. In the familiar Seuss pattern of a simple premise exaggerated to comic effect, a boy declares, "My bed is warm. My pillow's deep. Today's the day I'm going to sleep"—regardless of his mother, various arguments, successive waves of reinforcements, including the Marines, and a TV crew filming the momentous event. Actually, the development of the idea is a little tame compared with Seuss' other extravaganzas (and such determined all-day slumber is more the province of teen-agers and the good doctor's contemporaries than of readers at this level); but the book is delightfully enlivened by Stevenson's vigorous illustrations, which considerably augment the text by showing the full extent of the consternation caused by the hero's stubborness. Though there is plenty of the repetition required by learning readers, there are also some unusual words like Memphis, suggesting that this is not the easiest easy reader; but it has enough appeal to keep beginners entertained.
Pub Date: Oct. 12, 1987
ISBN: 0394892178
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Oct. 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1987
Categories: CHILDREN'S GENERAL CHILDREN'S
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