Voyeurism becomes a route to healing for a girl overwhelmed with grief. Eleven-year-old Hallie’s life has been turned upside-down since her father was killed in a car accident and her mother has had to relocate to a dingy old apartment building in a city far from where Hallie grew up. Resentful toward her mother and unwilling to make friends in her new school, she finds respite from her misery by peeking out through a crack in a boarded-up attic window into an apartment in the building right next door. There she sees a beautiful teenage girl, her younger brother, and their perpetually angry father—does he pose a threat to his children? At first she just makes up stories about them, and then, when she makes friends with the little boy at the library, she involves herself actively in her fantasies about them. Very few writers can do atmosphere better than Snyder (Gib and the Gray Ghost, 2000, etc.), and the scenes of Hallie up in the stifling attic waiting breathlessly for the drama next door to unfold are highly effective. Somewhat less effective, but absorbing nevertheless, are Hallie’s detective efforts to discover just what is going on with that unhappy family. The answer is a letdown to Hallie (and to the reader), but without being aware of it, she has let her active grieving go in favor of her interest in the living—which is, of course, the burden of the story. For all its obviousness, it is a deftly told story with sympathetic characters, from one of the real veterans in the field. (Fiction. 10-12)
Pub Date: June 12, 2001
ISBN: 0-385-32764-1
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2001
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A world-class charmer, Clements (The Janitor’s Boy, 2000, etc.) woos aspiring young authors—as well as grown up publishers, editors, agents, parents, teachers, and even reviewers—with this tongue-in-cheek tale of a 12-year-old novelist’s triumphant debut. Sparked by a chance comment of her mother’s, a harried assistant editor for a (surely fictional) children’s imprint, Natalie draws on deep reserves of feeling and writing talent to create a moving story about a troubled schoolgirl and her father. First, it moves her pushy friend Zoe, who decides that it has to be published; then it moves a timorous, second-year English teacher into helping Zoe set up a virtual literary agency; then, submitted pseudonymously, it moves Natalie’s unsuspecting mother into peddling it to her waspish editor-in-chief. Depicting the world of children’s publishing as a delicious mix of idealism and office politics, Clements squires the manuscript past slush pile and contract, the editing process, and initial buzz (“The Cheater grabs hold of your heart and never lets go,” gushes Kirkus). Finally, in a tearful, joyous scene—carefully staged by Zoe, who turns out to be perfect agent material: cunning, loyal, devious, manipulative, utterly shameless—at the publication party, Natalie’s identity is revealed as news cameras roll. Selznick’s gnomic, realistic portraits at once reflect the tale’s droll undertone and deftly capture each character’s distinct personality. Terrific for flourishing school writing projects, this is practical as well as poignant. Indeed, it “grabs hold of yourheart and never lets go.” (Fiction. 10-12)
Pub Date: June 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-689-82594-3
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2001
“Hear, and listen well, my friends, and I will tell you a tale that has been told for a thousand years and more.” It’s not exactly a rarely told tale, either, though this complete rendition is distinguished by both handsome packaging and a prose narrative that artfully mixes alliterative language reminiscent of the original, with currently topical references to, for instance, Grendel’s “endless terror raids,” and the “holocaust at Heorot.” Along with being printed on heavy stock and surrounded by braided borders, the text is paired to colorful scenes featuring a small human warrior squaring off with a succession of grimacing but not very frightening monsters in battles marked by but a few discreet splashes of blood. Morpurgo puts his finger on the story’s enduring appeal—“we still fear the evil that stalks out there in the darkness . . . ”—but offers a version unlikely to trouble the sleep of more sensitive readers or listeners. (Fiction. 10-12)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-7636-3206-6
Page Count: 96
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2006
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