In her first book, The Majesty of Grace, Jane Langton revealed remarkable insight into the inner life of a very normal, very charming little girl — a child the reader could identify with. Grace's struggle to achieve a compromise between fantasy and reality held an important lesson as well as a profound truth for her young audience. This second book reflects a vast departure in theme and style. Reminiscent in structure of Alice In Wonderland, it gives full vent to fantasy in following the escapades of Eddy and Eleanor in a world of dreams and nightmares. An old New England house about to be usurped by creditors, is the setting. Tracing valuable treasure to save it,- the problem. The solid citizens of Concord have threatened Aunt Lily with eviction unless she can scrape up the back taxes on her house. Determined to help, Eddy and Eleanor begin rummaging through the attic and discover a hidden room where two children lived years ago. According to Aunt Lily, Ned and Nora disappeared from their beds along with her fiance, Prince Krishna. As Eddy and Eleanor settle down in the mysterious beds, they are thrown headlong into a series of dual dreams —exciting and colorful — each inspired by Uncle Freddy's quotations from Thorean and Emerson or by a possible clue to the hidden treasure. The bubble dream climaxes a long odyssey. Eddy vanquishes the villain imprisoning the missing trio and Prince Krishna presents Aunt Lily with the Star of India, a precious jewel heretofore considered worthless. The fantasy, however rich in detail, is unaccented and too cumbersome to sustain attention, though there is much to be said in praise of Miss Langton's imagery. The attempt to weave New England history into the main fabric — to incorporate Thoreau's and Emerson's ideas, is fascinating but may be ineffectual for this age group.
Pub Date: Aug. 29, 1962
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 1, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1962
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Readers can still rely on this series to bring laughs.
The Heffley family’s house undergoes a disastrous attempt at home improvement.
When Great Aunt Reba dies, she leaves some money to the family. Greg’s mom calls a family meeting to determine what to do with their share, proposing home improvements and then overruling the family’s cartoonish wish lists and instead pushing for an addition to the kitchen. Before bringing in the construction crew, the Heffleys attempt to do minor maintenance and repairs themselves—during which Greg fails at the work in various slapstick scenes. Once the professionals are brought in, the problems keep getting worse: angry neighbors, terrifying problems in walls, and—most serious—civil permitting issues that put the kibosh on what work’s been done. Left with only enough inheritance to patch and repair the exterior of the house—and with the school’s dismal standardized test scores as a final straw—Greg’s mom steers the family toward moving, opening up house-hunting and house-selling storylines (and devastating loyal Rowley, who doesn’t want to lose his best friend). While Greg’s positive about the move, he’s not completely uncaring about Rowley’s action. (And of course, Greg himself is not as unaffected as he wishes.) The gags include effectively placed callbacks to seemingly incidental events (the “stress lizard” brought in on testing day is particularly funny) and a lampoon of after-school-special–style problem books. Just when it seems that the Heffleys really will move, a new sequence of chaotic trouble and property destruction heralds a return to the status quo. Whew.
Readers can still rely on this series to bring laughs. (Graphic/fiction hybrid. 8-12)Pub Date: Nov. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4197-3903-3
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Amulet/Abrams
Review Posted Online: Nov. 18, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
Little Blue’s fans will enjoy the animal sounds and counting opportunities, but it’s the sparkling lights on the truck’s own...
The sturdy Little Blue Truck is back for his third adventure, this time delivering Christmas trees to his band of animal pals.
The truck is decked out for the season with a Christmas wreath that suggests a nose between headlights acting as eyeballs. Little Blue loads up with trees at Toad’s Trees, where five trees are marked with numbered tags. These five trees are counted and arithmetically manipulated in various ways throughout the rhyming story as they are dropped off one by one to Little Blue’s friends. The final tree is reserved for the truck’s own use at his garage home, where he is welcomed back by the tree salestoad in a neatly circular fashion. The last tree is already decorated, and Little Blue gets a surprise along with readers, as tiny lights embedded in the illustrations sparkle for a few seconds when the last page is turned. Though it’s a gimmick, it’s a pleasant surprise, and it fits with the retro atmosphere of the snowy country scenes. The short, rhyming text is accented with colored highlights, red for the animal sounds and bright green for the numerical words in the Christmas-tree countdown.
Little Blue’s fans will enjoy the animal sounds and counting opportunities, but it’s the sparkling lights on the truck’s own tree that will put a twinkle in a toddler’s eyes. (Picture book. 2-5)Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-544-32041-3
Page Count: 24
Publisher: HMH Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 11, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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