A sandy slice-of-life treat, rich in feeling and insight from dawn to dark.
Two veteran novelists chronicle life-altering moments and meetings for an ensemble cast of young visitors to a New Jersey beach.
Twenty-eight named children and two dogs may seem like a lot, but each one is so individually distinct that readers should have little trouble keeping them straight. The entries are arranged from dawn to dark, with Ma Van As’ grayscale art, which is reminiscent of animated features, offering occasional views of people lounging on blankets and similar emblematic beach scenes as visual breaks. The co-authors relate the incidents in an understated way that infuses even the seemingly minor or common ones with special “kid magic.” An impromptu group pretends that a stray dog can talk, for example. Events take a dramatic turn when a father yelling at his small son draws a flash mob of young people who circle him and stare silently until he stops. Meanwhile, in a lighter vein, Octavio’s secret crush offers help (along with some gentle mockery) when he loses his trunks, and Leslie forgets to be bored when an elderly beachcomber teaches her how to look closely at a wondrous queen conch shell. Young people take steps toward promising futures by laughing together, dealing with anxieties, and showing insight or compassion; their stories are individually entertaining and uplifting, with a cumulative effect. Names, references to food and homelands, and illustrations cue ethnic and racial diversity in the cast.
A sandy slice-of-life treat, rich in feeling and insight from dawn to dark. (Fiction. 9-13)Pub Date: April 1, 2025
ISBN: 9780063380929
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Clarion/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Dec. 28, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2025
Rich and strange (and kitted out with an eye-catching cover), but stronger in the set pieces than the internal logic.
Chainani works an elaborate sea change akin to Gregory Maguire’s Wicked (1995), though he leaves the waters muddied.
Every four years, two children, one regarded as particularly nice and the other particularly nasty, are snatched from the village of Gavaldon by the shadowy School Master to attend the divided titular school. Those who survive to graduate become major or minor characters in fairy tales. When it happens to sweet, Disney princess–like Sophie and her friend Agatha, plain of features, sour of disposition and low of self-esteem, they are both horrified to discover that they’ve been dropped not where they expect but at Evil and at Good respectively. Gradually—too gradually, as the author strings out hundreds of pages of Hogwarts-style pranks, classroom mishaps and competitions both academic and romantic—it becomes clear that the placement wasn’t a mistake at all. Growing into their true natures amid revelations and marked physical changes, the two spark escalating rivalry between the wings of the school. This leads up to a vicious climactic fight that sees Good and Evil repeatedly switching sides. At this point, readers are likely to feel suddenly left behind, as, thanks to summary deus ex machina resolutions, everything turns out swell(ish).
Rich and strange (and kitted out with an eye-catching cover), but stronger in the set pieces than the internal logic. (Fantasy. 11-13)Pub Date: May 14, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-06-210489-2
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Feb. 12, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
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
SEEN & HEARD
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