Julia, 11, tells how she is sent for the summer term, in the dark days before WW II, to a bleak old house she barely remembers, where her father (Gerald) and stepmother (Trudl) now live. There, to her horror, angry voices from the past speak through her at unexpected moments—Joshua Harken, a 17th-century alchemist whose tragic end remains a mystery; her own parents, in the throes of their long-ago divorce. Julia feels abandoned, and with reason: her siblings are grown, her mother has a new family, and she's to be sent away to school in the fall. It's not clear why her parents decided that she should attend the odd little school in Dune for a single term. Her father is not even here: he's in Lucerne to rehearse his new play, leaving Julia with a collection of violent, terrifying plays to read—like Dr. Faustus and The Duchess of Malfi. Trudl, involved in her own tragedy (Gerald married her simply to rescue her from Austria; her love for him is unrequited), inexplicably assigns Julia a gloomy, distant bedroom and is abstracted and anxious at the rare times when she returns from her enigmatic errands. There's a fair amount of interesting material here, but it isn't blended into a coherent whole. Julia's frightening possession is never explained; the Harken mystery is left half unravelled; and Trudl, whose real troubles are more urgent than Julia's gothic horrors, remains a minor character, her future beyond Julia's ken. This gifted, prolific author does evoke a spooky setting and convey the unease before the war; but the novel falls far short of her best work.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1989
ISBN: 0385299753
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: April 12, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1989
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Broccoli: No way is James going to eat broccoli. “It’s disgusting,” says James. Well then, James, says his father, let’s consider the alternatives: some wormy dirt, perhaps, some stinky socks, some pre-chewed gum? James reconsiders the broccoli, but—milk? “Blech,” says James. Right, says his father, who needs strong bones? You’ll be great at hide-and-seek, though not so great at baseball and kickball and even tickling the dog’s belly. James takes a mouthful. So it goes through lumpy oatmeal, mushroom lasagna and slimy eggs, with James’ father parrying his son’s every picky thrust. And it is fun, because the father’s retorts are so outlandish: the lasagna-making troll in the basement who will be sent back to the rat circus, there to endure the rodent’s vicious bites; the uneaten oatmeal that will grow and grow and probably devour the dog that the boy won’t be able to tickle any longer since his bones are so rubbery. Schneider’s watercolors catch the mood of gentle ribbing, the looks of bewilderment and surrender and the deadpanned malarkey. It all makes James’ father’s last urging—“I was just going to say that you might like them if you tried them”—wholly fresh and unexpected advice. (Early reader. 5-9)
Pub Date: May 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-547-14956-1
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Clarion Books
Review Posted Online: April 4, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Although the love comes shining through, the text often confuses in straining for patterned simplicity.
A collection of parental wishes for a child.
It starts out simply enough: two children run pell-mell across an open field, one holding a high-flying kite with the line “I wish you more ups than downs.” But on subsequent pages, some of the analogous concepts are confusing or ambiguous. The line “I wish you more tippy-toes than deep” accompanies a picture of a boy happily swimming in a pool. His feet are visible, but it's not clear whether he's floating in the deep end or standing in the shallow. Then there's a picture of a boy on a beach, his pockets bulging with driftwood and colorful shells, looking frustrated that his pockets won't hold the rest of his beachcombing treasures, which lie tantalizingly before him on the sand. The line reads: “I wish you more treasures than pockets.” Most children will feel the better wish would be that he had just the right amount of pockets for his treasures. Some of the wordplay, such as “more can than knot” and “more pause than fast-forward,” will tickle older readers with their accompanying, comical illustrations. The beautifully simple pictures are a sweet, kid- and parent-appealing blend of comic-strip style and fine art; the cast of children depicted is commendably multiethnic.
Although the love comes shining through, the text often confuses in straining for patterned simplicity. (Picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: April 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4521-2699-9
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Chronicle Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2015
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