True to life and compellingly dramatic.
The historic sled dog “Serum Run” was undertaken to prevent a diphtheria epidemic in Nome, Alaska.
Inventing minor details as needed to construct a seamless narrative while sticking closely to participants’ memoirs and other documentary evidence, Moss recounts each leg of the nearly 700-mile relay—capturing both its urgency and the serious dangers faced by the 19 teams of dogs and men who undertook it. Exerting authorial license around a claim that the “malamute chorus,” a sort of canine news and social network that even worked over long distances, was a real Alaska thing, she tells the tale from doggy as well as human points of view by weaving in engaging exchanges of canine banter: “I can feel it in my bones—we’re headed for Norton Bay. I know that Togo here loves the sea ice, but it gives me the heebie-jeebies.” Still, nearly every member of the cast, two- or four-legged, was real, as were the extreme cold, severe winds, blinding snow fog, and other obstacles faced by the tough dogs and rugged-looking, fur-clad men in Hughes’ stark black-and-white illustrations. The disease claimed one child identified as Inupiaq/Norwegian, and one musher was part Athabascan; otherwise the human cast reads as white.
True to life and compellingly dramatic. (afterword, source list, end notes) (Fictionalized nonfiction. 10-13)Pub Date: Nov. 28, 2023
ISBN: 9781250792532
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Godwin Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 26, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
Dolphin lovers will appreciate this look at our complicated relationship with these marine mammals.
Is dolphin-assisted therapy so beneficial to patients that it’s worth keeping a wild dolphin captive?
Twelve-year-old Lily has lived with her emotionally distant oncologist stepfather and a succession of nannies since her mother died in a car accident two years ago. Nannies leave because of the difficulty of caring for Adam, Lily’s severely autistic 4-year-old half brother. The newest, Suzanne, seems promising, but Lily is tired of feeling like a planet orbiting the sun Adam. When she meets blind Zoe, who will attend the same private middle school as Lily in the fall, Lily’s happy to have a friend. However, Zoe’s take on the plight of the captive dolphin, Nori, used in Adam’s therapy opens Lily’s eyes. She knows she must use her influence over her stepfather, who is consulting on Nori’s treatment for cancer (caused by an oil spill), to free the animal. Lily’s got several fine lines to walk, as she works to hold onto her new friend, convince her stepfather of the rightness of releasing Nori, and do what’s best for Adam. In her newest exploration of animal-human relationships, Rorby’s lonely, mature heroine faces tough but realistic situations. Siblings of children on the spectrum will identify with Lily. If the tale flirts with sentimentality and some of the characters are strident in their views, the whole never feels maudlin or didactic.
Dolphin lovers will appreciate this look at our complicated relationship with these marine mammals. (Fiction. 10-13)Pub Date: May 26, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-545-67605-2
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2015
The exquisite writing can’t compensate for the story’s overwrought elements.
In Wolk’s latest, a self-contained girl finds companionship in one of the most notoriously unfriendly of places: a Maine island.
Twelve-year-old Lucretia and her mother, both artists, have moved to fictional Candle Island for the isolation; grieving the recent loss of Lucretia’s father and with a big secret to keep, they need to be where, as her mother says, “they’ll let us be who we are.” Lucretia soon draws the ire of prickly Murdock and the tentative friendship of Bastian, her cousin, two townies with secrets of their own. Among the island’s summer people are a nosy art critic and three young sociopaths, who all complicate life for Lucretia and her mother, though in very different ways. At a sentence level, this work glows. Lucretia hears sounds as colors (although synesthesia goes unmentioned), layering them onto her narration the way she applies her oils to canvas. Wolk’s characterization and plotting, however, waver. The children too often speak with a formality that’s not attributable to the late 1960s / early ’70s setting, and Lucretia’s self-possession frequently makes her feel far older than 12. The tense cultural backdrop would be an effective one for the exploration of Wolk’s themes were it not for the three summer kids’ flagrant evil, which leaches the story of its subtlety. Most characters present white.
The exquisite writing can’t compensate for the story’s overwrought elements. (Historical fiction. 10-13)Pub Date: April 22, 2025
ISBN: 9780593698549
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: Dec. 28, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2025
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