Acutely perceptive and crystal clear; deeply attuned to kids' feelings yet cool-eyed and shrewd; and, to boot, a solidly realized story propelled by original, huggably vulnerable characters: This story of a shallow, career-minded country singer's three motherless kids is just what a children's novel should be. Retta (for Loretta Lynn) has raised her brothers since their singer mother was killed in a plane crash; and she takes her role as mother hen and recreation director with fierce solemnity. Bossy, she turns them out at midnight (their father is off performing) to steal swims in a neighboring colonel's pool. ("We're going to do all the things rich people do. Only we have to do them at night, that's the only difference.") But Retta's control slips when brother Johnny—bursting with self-satisfaction and the certainty of her chagrin-makes a friend. (Not just any friend, but a boy who makes and flies his own airplanes, with radio controls.) Soon, Retta has lost her puppeteer's hold on Roy, the youngest, to the glamour of Johnny's friend. Moody and undone, she follows the boys and spies on them, fired by motherly concern (as she insists) but also seething with jealousy like the child she is and the power-player she is becoming. When Retta slips out one night on Johnny's tail, Roy ends up, panicked, in the pool. The colonel rescues him and summons their father, who arrives home in his pink velour cowboy suit; and in the ensuing showdown Retta "felt as bewildered as a child whose dolls have come to life and are demanding real attention." Though this is Retta's story, each of her brothers has his spotlit moments. "Invisible" Johnny's late-blooming sense of self is heartening to behold; and Roy, indicatively, is touchingly disabused of a running fantasy about an offstage, odiferous plant. (They should shut it down, says Retta, but Roy has envisioned chopping it down.) Retta, shocked into self-awareness by the pool incident and by Johnny's friend's challenge ("and do you think for them too?"), is eased into letting go by the sympathetic guidance of her father's girlfriend Brendelie—who shows signs of relieving Retta by marrying into the family. Byars takes us all into the family, and puts us in touch with the humanity behind the tacky (father), the officious (Retta), and the invisible among us.
Pub Date: April 30, 1980
ISBN: 0174324308
Page Count: 113
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: April 18, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1980
Broccoli: No way is James going to eat broccoli. “It’s disgusting,” says James. Well then, James, says his father, let’s consider the alternatives: some wormy dirt, perhaps, some stinky socks, some pre-chewed gum? James reconsiders the broccoli, but—milk? “Blech,” says James. Right, says his father, who needs strong bones? You’ll be great at hide-and-seek, though not so great at baseball and kickball and even tickling the dog’s belly. James takes a mouthful. So it goes through lumpy oatmeal, mushroom lasagna and slimy eggs, with James’ father parrying his son’s every picky thrust. And it is fun, because the father’s retorts are so outlandish: the lasagna-making troll in the basement who will be sent back to the rat circus, there to endure the rodent’s vicious bites; the uneaten oatmeal that will grow and grow and probably devour the dog that the boy won’t be able to tickle any longer since his bones are so rubbery. Schneider’s watercolors catch the mood of gentle ribbing, the looks of bewilderment and surrender and the deadpanned malarkey. It all makes James’ father’s last urging—“I was just going to say that you might like them if you tried them”—wholly fresh and unexpected advice. (Early reader. 5-9)
Pub Date: May 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-547-14956-1
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Clarion Books
Review Posted Online: April 4, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A validating and breathtaking next chapter of a Mother Goose favorite.
Humpty Dumpty, classically portrayed as an egg, recounts what happened after he fell off the wall in Santat’s latest.
An avid ornithophile, Humpty had loved being atop a high wall to be close to the birds, but after his fall and reassembly by the king’s men, high places—even his lofted bed—become intolerable. As he puts it, “There were some parts that couldn’t be healed with bandages and glue.” Although fear bars Humpty from many of his passions, it is the birds he misses the most, and he painstakingly builds (after several papercut-punctuated attempts) a beautiful paper plane to fly among them. But when the plane lands on the very wall Humpty has so doggedly been avoiding, he faces the choice of continuing to follow his fear or to break free of it, which he does, going from cracked egg to powerful flight in a sequence of stunning spreads. Santat applies his considerable talent for intertwining visual and textual, whimsy and gravity to his consideration of trauma and the oft-overlooked importance of self-determined recovery. While this newest addition to Santat’s successes will inevitably (and deservedly) be lauded, younger readers may not notice the de-emphasis of an equally important part of recovery: that it is not compulsory—it is OK not to be OK.
A validating and breathtaking next chapter of a Mother Goose favorite. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Oct. 3, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-62672-682-6
Page Count: 45
Publisher: Roaring Brook Press
Review Posted Online: July 16, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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