In 1959, a spunky 12-year-old decides to make some money to buy a Barbie doll by writing to her Senator’s beautiful wife, Jackie Kennedy, in this truly funny debut novel. Abby wants to be a fashion designer and has concocted some lovely ensembles for Jackie just in case Senator Kennedy decides to run for President. She charges only a few cents for each design. But will Jackie reply to Abby? Meanwhile, Abby’s extended family creates comedy and drama, while Abby avoids her uncaring father and her apparently unfeeling mother, who appears mostly to be concerned with maintaining the traditions of their Eastern European Jewish origins. Abby also greatly regrets a nasty trick she plays on her elderly neighbors, who just might not be witches, as her Aunt believes. Axelrod emphasizes the comedy while building up to some heartfelt drama. Young readers will appreciate the author’s decision to reveal the fallibility of the adults in Abby’s life. Abby’s earnest letters to Jackie, with numerous postscripts and enclosed fashion drawings (not seen), stand out as especially sweet. Abby is an especially memorable protagonist, but all her characters vibrate with life. The 1959 suburban Massachusetts environment comes across beautifully as well. Axelrod takes the narrative up to November 1961, with no hint of the later assassination. Funny, lively, sensitive—a real winner. (Historical fiction. 8-12)
Pub Date: March 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-8234-2340-8
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Holiday House
Review Posted Online: Feb. 27, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2011
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
Funny and endearing, though incomplete characterizations provoke questions.
An isolated class of misfits and a teacher on the edge of retirement are paired together for a year of (supposed) failure.
Zachary Kermit, a 55-year-old teacher, has been haunted for the last 27 years by a student cheating scandal that has earned him the derision of his colleagues and killed his teaching spirit. So when he is assigned to teach the Self-Contained Special Eighth-Grade Class—a dumping ground for “the Unteachables,” students with “behavior issues, learning problems, juvenile delinquents”—he is unfazed, as he is only a year away from early retirement. His relationship with his seven students—diverse in temperament, circumstance, and ability—will be one of “uncomfortable roommates” until June. But when Mr. Kermit unexpectedly stands up for a student, the kids of SCS-8 notice his sense of “justice and fairness.” Mr. Kermit finds he may even care a little about them, and they start to care back in their own way, turning a corner and bringing along a few ghosts from Mr. Kermit’s past. Writing in the alternating voices of Mr. Kermit, most of his students, and two administrators, Korman spins a narrative of redemption and belief in exceeding self-expectations. Naming conventions indicate characters of different ethnic backgrounds, but the book subscribes to a white default. The two students who do not narrate may be students of color, and their characterizations subtly—though arguably inadequately—demonstrate the danger of preconceptions.
Funny and endearing, though incomplete characterizations provoke questions. (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Jan. 8, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-06-256388-0
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Balzer + Bray/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Sept. 16, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2018
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