An imbalanced mesh of sibling squabbles and overly didactic reef advocacy.
Gracie convinces her parents to take her and her little brother, Ben, snorkeling in Roatán.
Though her ultimate snorkeling goal is the Maldives, Korean American Gracie knows that baby steps are necessary to get her family from New York to the other side of the world, so she compromises by suggesting Honduras for spring break. Gracie also knows that patience is key when dealing with impulsive, boundary-crossing Ben. Gracie finds joy in seeing fairy basslets, butterflyfish, and other marine wildlife, but as Ben’s behavior grates on her and she learns about the threats faced by the world’s reefs, she’s brought to her boiling point. Gracie’s attempts to engage Ben in her interests fail to create a cohesive story. Her parents also leave her to do more than her fair share of caring for Ben—a choice that the author never unpacks or pushes back on. Frequent lectures from those who run the dive shop and the local marine park offer valuable information about protecting reefs but feel preachy and clunkily inserted. Ben behaves more like what an adult thinks a 6-year-old talks and acts like. While some readers may share Gracie’s passions, her descriptions of snorkeling and fishing are often disrupted by inorganic language and actions. Final art not seen.
An imbalanced mesh of sibling squabbles and overly didactic reef advocacy. (author’s note) (Fiction. 9-11)Pub Date: Sept. 17, 2024
ISBN: 9780063346291
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Allida/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2024
The journey is even gently funny—Omakayas’s brother spends much of the year with a porcupine on his head. Charming and...
This third entry in the Birchbark House series takes Omakayas and her family west from their home on the Island of the Golden-Breasted Woodpecker, away from land the U.S. government has claimed.
Difficulties abound; the unknown landscape is fraught with danger, and they are nearing hostile Bwaanag territory. Omakayas’s family is not only close, but growing: The travelers adopt two young chimookoman (white) orphans along the way. When treachery leaves them starving and alone in a northern Minnesota winter, it will take all of their abilities and love to survive. The heartwarming account of Omakayas’s year of travel explores her changing family relationships and culminates in her first moon, the onset of puberty. It would be understandable if this darkest-yet entry in Erdrich’s response to the Little House books were touched by bitterness, yet this gladdening story details Omakayas’s coming-of-age with appealing optimism.
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-06-029787-9
Page Count: 208
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2008
A waggish tale with a serious (and timely) theme.
An age-old rivalry is reluctantly put aside when two young vacationers are lost in the wilderness.
Anthropomorphic—in body if definitely not behavior—Dogg Scout Oscar and pampered Molly Hissleton stray from their separate camps, meet by chance in a trackless magic forest, and almost immediately recognize that their only chance of survival, distasteful as the notion may be, lies in calling a truce. Patterson and Grabenstein really work the notion here that cooperation is better than prejudice founded on ignorance and habit, interspersing explicit exchanges on the topic while casting the squabbling pair with complementary abilities that come out as they face challenges ranging from finding food to escaping such predators as a mountain lion and a pack of vicious “weaselboars.” By the time they cross a wide river (on a raft steered by “Old Jim,” an otter whose homespun utterances are generally cribbed from Mark Twain—an uneasy reference) back to civilization, the two are BFFs. But can that friendship survive the return, with all the social and familial pressures to resume the old enmity? A climactic cage-match–style confrontation before a worked-up multispecies audience provides the answer. In the illustrations (not seen in finished form) López plops wide-eyed animal heads atop clothed, more or less human forms and adds dialogue balloons for punchlines.
A waggish tale with a serious (and timely) theme. (Fantasy. 9-11)Pub Date: April 1, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-316-41156-1
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Jimmy Patterson/Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Dec. 15, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2019
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