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THE QUIRKS AND THE QUIRKALICIOUS BIRTHDAY

From the Quirks series , Vol. 3

This birthday-anxiety story is made fresh by both the twins’ dynamics and the riddles.

The Quirk twins, about to turn 10, disagree about how to celebrate against a backdrop of magical mishaps.

This year, Grandpa Quill’s Quirkalicious Birthday Hunt will be the toughest yet. (Rules are helpfully spelled out: In the week leading to their birthday, there are five clues; four lead to small gifts and the last to the big one.) Facing a greater-than-expected challenge, Penelope and Molly disagree on how to proceed and who should call the shots. Additionally, for the first time ever, they are having a birthday party with friends. Molly wants her first birthday party to be perfect—and perfectly normal; Penelope’s anxious about being the center of attention and keeping her splashy magic power (her thoughts manifest in reality) under wraps. This conflict of desires is heightened as Pen concludes that Molly’s bossy, and Molly resents the sacrifices she makes to help Penelope control her magic. Additionally, the scavenger hunt’s riddles challenge the girls, but nothing puzzles them more than the seemingly random small gifts. Will the twins reconcile their differences, prevent their birthday party from becoming a disaster and find their big gift? Of course, but the emotional roots of the disagreement will ring true for readers with siblings or close friends, grounding the story with a touch of reality amid the silly magic.

This birthday-anxiety story is made fresh by both the twins’ dynamics and the riddles. (illustrations not seen) (Fantasy. 8-11)

Pub Date: Jan. 13, 2015

ISBN: 978-1-61963-370-4

Page Count: 208

Publisher: Bloomsbury

Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2014

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2014

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TUCK EVERLASTING

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. 

However the compelling fitness of theme and event and the apt but unexpected imagery (the opening sentences compare the first week in August when this takes place to "the highest seat of a Ferris wheel when it pauses in its turning") help to justify the extravagant early assertion that had the secret about to be revealed been known at the time of the action, the very earth "would have trembled on its axis like a beetle on a pin." (Fantasy. 9-11)

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

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THE PORCUPINE YEAR

From the Birchbark House series , Vol. 3

The journey is even gently funny—Omakayas’s brother spends much of the year with a porcupine on his head. Charming and...

This third entry in the Birchbark House series takes Omakayas and her family west from their home on the Island of the Golden-Breasted Woodpecker, away from land the U.S. government has claimed. 

Difficulties abound; the unknown landscape is fraught with danger, and they are nearing hostile Bwaanag territory. Omakayas’s family is not only close, but growing: The travelers adopt two young chimookoman (white) orphans along the way. When treachery leaves them starving and alone in a northern Minnesota winter, it will take all of their abilities and love to survive. The heartwarming account of Omakayas’s year of travel explores her changing family relationships and culminates in her first moon, the onset of puberty. It would be understandable if this darkest-yet entry in Erdrich’s response to the Little House books were touched by bitterness, yet this gladdening story details Omakayas’s coming-of-age with appealing optimism. 

The journey is even gently funny—Omakayas’s brother spends much of the year with a porcupine on his head. Charming and enlightening. (Historical fiction. 9-11)

Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2008

ISBN: 978-0-06-029787-9

Page Count: 208

Publisher: HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2008

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