A quiet story to spark conversation about conservation and community.
While fighting to conserve a grove of trees, a young girl discovers she’s put down roots in the community surrounding her.
When 12-year-old Holly arrives in a tiny Vermont town to stay with her uncle, she’s certain her itinerant actor father will tire of his current role (understudy for Woodland Sprite #4 in A Midsummer Night’s Dream) and will soon uproot her yet again, so she vows to remain an uninvolved stranger. But it’s hard for tree-loving Holly to stay detached after she learns about a grove of endemic Arden trees that are threatened by the expansion of the town’s job-creating plastics factory. As Holly joins the fight for the grove, she realizes that trees aren’t the only ones that depend on the support of others, and that sometimes, found family can be just as important as biological relatives. Holly’s journey has a leisurely pace, and Holly is an introspective, quiet, and reflective protagonist. Her character is richly imagined, and she thrives with the support of a diverse, if rather one-dimensional, set of townsfolk. Holly and her uncle, who’s gay, read white. Adults may find more nostalgic delight in the whimsical town than young readers will, filled as it is with quaint shops and local artists. Readers seeking a title that touches on the environment, pollution, and the interconnectedness of life will find many educational moments woven into this gentle tale.
A quiet story to spark conversation about conservation and community. (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: May 28, 2024
ISBN: 9780063287969
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Quill Tree Books/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 9, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2024
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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