A shy fifth-grader has a hard-enough time getting by in his new school on his own, but his mother's new career as an events DJ threatens to undermine what little respect he may have earned from his classmates. Brendan Breen (one of his mother's many faults is a penchant for alliterative names) knows that his mother's appearance at the school's Music and Munchies Night will ruin his life forever, but none of his plans to prevent it work: his aunt refuses to feign a deathly illness on the day of the event; his mother rejects his suggestion that she use a different name; and she is downright offended when he brings home a wig so she will be unrecognizable. Predictably, Music and Munchies Night is an unqualified success, and Brendan even survives—and enjoys—doing the hokey-pokey. Wound around this plot is Brendan's slow integration into the classroom culture via a group project, and his ultimate discovery that he himself is something of a showman. Newcomer McDonough has crafted a comfortable, if thoroughly predictable, tale about fitting in, presenting a world in which the worst possible thing that can happen is embarrassment. The book seems unsure of its audience: Urbanovic's spot black-and-white cartoons are very young-looking and pigeonhole it squarely for younger readers, but the font size and relative denseness of text make it look older and somewhat more forbidding than the average early chapter book. There are some mildly amusing moments, but this ultimately superficial story does nothing particularly new. (Fiction. 9-11)
Pub Date: April 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-8126-2699-0
Page Count: 120
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2001
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
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
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