A competent, if somewhat belabored take on sensitive family issues.
Twelve-year-old Maggie’s contented life is disrupted.
Sure, only child Maggie’s parents insist they all eat dinner together at the table, and they are big on engaging her in dinner conversation, but though she complains a bit, she is secretly happy that they are so persistent about communicating with her. And she is glad she doesn’t have best friend Olive’s life, with a chaotic little brother, or other BFF Rachel’s situation, with family members who eat separately in front of various screens. While Maggie is nervous about being in middle school, she knows her parents are always there for her. Plus, she has her beloved grandmother, who has taught her about interior design—something Maggie adores and shares with her BFFs. But everything starts to unravel when a previously unknown 13-year-old half brother from an affair her father had shows up and, on top of that, Maggie’s grandmother shows signs of Alzheimer’s. While the storyline admirably tackles difficult issues with compassion and evenhandedness, the writing overall feels more dutiful than original. Many scenes seem contrived to lead up to a neatly wrapped message that is insistently spelled out instead of being presented for readers to discover for themselves. The overarching interior design metaphor stretches itself thin in Maggie’s first-person–narration revelations. Characters are White by default.
A competent, if somewhat belabored take on sensitive family issues. (Fiction. 9-12)Pub Date: May 11, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-79720-123-8
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Chronicle Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 25, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2021
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
Charming, poignant, and thoughtfully woven.
An aspiring scientist and a budding artist become friends and help each other with dream projects.
Unfolding in mid-1980s Sacramento, California, this story stars 12-year-olds Rosalind and Benjamin as first-person narrators in alternating chapters. Ro’s father, a fellow space buff, was killed by a drunk driver; the rocket they were working on together lies unfinished in her closet. As for Benji, not only has his best friend, Amir, moved away, but the comic book holding the clue for locating his dad is also missing. Along with their profound personal losses, the protagonists share a fixation with the universe’s intriguing potential: Ro decides to complete the rocket and hopes to launch mementos of her father into outer space while Benji’s conviction that aliens and UFOs are real compels his imagination and creativity as an artist. An accident in science class triggers a chain of events forcing Benji and Ro, who is new to the school, to interact and unintentionally learn each other’s secrets. They resolve to find Benji’s dad—a famous comic-book artist—and partner to finish Ro’s rocket for the science fair. Together, they overcome technical, scheduling, and geographical challenges. Readers will be drawn in by amusing and fantastical elements in the comic book theme, high emotional stakes that arouse sympathy, and well-drawn character development as the protagonists navigate life lessons around grief, patience, self-advocacy, and standing up for others. Ro is biracial (Chinese/White); Benji is White.
Charming, poignant, and thoughtfully woven. (Fiction. 9-12)Pub Date: Jan. 12, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-06-300888-5
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Quill Tree Books/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Oct. 26, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2020
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