A deliciously sinister read.
The residents of Oakdale, Ohio, don’t take kindly to strangers, and when Dr. Kingsbury and his assistants roll into town in October 1887 peddling Dr. Kingsbury’s Miraculous Tonic, folks are suspicious.
Thirteen-year-old Jack has traveled with the doctor ever since the tonic brought his little sister, Lucy, back from the brink of death. His work not only helps support his family, but repays their debt to the doctor. But when 16-year-old Isaac, his fellow assistant, mysteriously runs away, Jack discovers a darker side to the doctor. While Jack is beginning to suspect the doctor isn’t who he claims to be, the townspeople witness the tonic restoring one man’s hearing and helping another walk without a crutch. Soon after, they are buying up the tonic in the hopes it will bring the rain to their drought-plagued fields. Friendships with Bear, a stray dog, and Cora, the adventurous niece of the mayor, give Jack much-needed support. Hope is offered in the parallel story of Silas Carey, whose life 50 years earlier was not unlike Jack’s in the present day. Atmospheric with decidedly ominous overtones, this historical novel offers just the right mix of good vs. evil. Main characters are presumed White; there is a Black family in town, described using the term colored. The author’s note adds historical context about 19th-century patent medicines as well as commentary on changing language norms around race.
A deliciously sinister read. (Historical fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: July 26, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-984813-15-2
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: April 26, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Eminently readable and appealing; will tug at dog-loving readers’ heartstrings.
A loquacious, lovable dog narrates the challenges of shelter life as he longs for a home.
Friendly three-legged Chance is the perfect guide to Dogtown, a shelter that houses both warmblooded and robot dogs. In fact, she’s “Management’s lucky charm,” roaming freely without being confined to a cage and leaving kibble for her mouse friend. Life is pretty good. But she still yearns for reunification with her family and, like many of the living pups, harbors suspicion of her robot counterparts, who are convenient and more easily adoptable but lacking in personality. When Metal Head, an oddly engineered e-dog, bonds with a child during a shelter reading program, Chance’s assumptions about heartless robot dogs are upended. As Chance connects with Metal Head, the two make a brief escape into the wider world, and Chance learns a familiar lesson: Everyone longs for a place to belong. Memories of Chance’s happy home loom large in her mind: Easy days with the Bessers, a sweet Black family, were disrupted by a neglectful dogsitter, the accident that cost Chance her leg, and Chance’s flight in search of safety. Chance’s chatty narrative style includes flashbacks, vignettes about fellow shelter pets, and thoughtful observations, for example, about the “boohoos,” or sad new arrivals. The story offers many moments of laughter and reflection, all greatly enhanced by West’s utterly charming grayscale illustrations of irresistible pooches.
Eminently readable and appealing; will tug at dog-loving readers’ heartstrings. (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Sept. 19, 2023
ISBN: 9781250811608
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Feiwel & Friends
Review Posted Online: July 13, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2023
The three way chats, in which they are joined by other animals, about web spinning, themselves, other humans—are as often...
A successful juvenile by the beloved New Yorker writer portrays a farm episode with an imaginative twist that makes a poignant, humorous story of a pig, a spider and a little girl.
Young Fern Arable pleads for the life of runt piglet Wilbur and gets her father to sell him to a neighbor, Mr. Zuckerman. Daily, Fern visits the Zuckermans to sit and muse with Wilbur and with the clever pen spider Charlotte, who befriends him when he is lonely and downcast. At the news of Wilbur's forthcoming slaughter, campaigning Charlotte, to the astonishment of people for miles around, spins words in her web. "Some Pig" comes first. Then "Terrific"—then "Radiant". The last word, when Wilbur is about to win a show prize and Charlotte is about to die from building her egg sac, is "Humble". And as the wonderful Charlotte does die, the sadness is tempered by the promise of more spiders next spring.
The three way chats, in which they are joined by other animals, about web spinning, themselves, other humans—are as often informative as amusing, and the whole tenor of appealing wit and pathos will make fine entertainment for reading aloud, too.Pub Date: Oct. 15, 1952
ISBN: 978-0-06-026385-0
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1952
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
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