Small dimensions and an appealing jacket depicting four kids in a treehouse bespeak a popular series book (and this is the first of four); readers drawn by these features won't be disappointed in this accessible story of a family moving from Australia, where they've always lived, to their rolling stone of a father's New Zealand birthplace. Dad's large extended family greets them with a party, during which ten-year-old Pete's newly met same-age cousins—led by Tracey, known as a "bad case"- -devise a scary initiation: he's to spend the night in the family graveyard. With some trepidation, Pete not only meets the challenge but is enriched by it ("Looking up...from between the tombstones, he had taken infinity by surprise. Now it made new, enormous, unending sense...this time he felt [the stars] had altered him forever")—just one of the Mahy touches that make this story special. Their older cousins give the perpetrators a taste of the fright they've tried to inflict, then good-humoredly get everyone inside without loss of face or retribution. Each deftly sketched character (and there are enough so that the genealogy provided is welcome) has the aura of a fully realized personality; they're the kind of new friends who grow ever more interesting—a boisterous, good-natured clan with traditional family songs and a delightful habit of making up new rhymes on the spot. A swell introduction to Mahy. (Fiction. 8-11)
Pub Date: June 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-385-31015-3
Page Count: 100
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1993
Though it lacks nuance, still a must-read.
Tyler is the son of generations of Vermont dairy farmers.
Mari is the Mexican-born daughter of undocumented migrant laborers whose mother has vanished in a perilous border crossing. When Tyler’s father is disabled in an accident, the only way the family can afford to keep the farm is by hiring Mari’s family. As Tyler and Mari’s friendship grows, the normal tensions of middle-school boy-girl friendships are complicated by philosophical and political truths. Tyler wonders how he can be a patriot while his family breaks the law. Mari worries about her vanished mother and lives in fear that she will be separated from her American-born sisters if la migra comes. Unashamedly didactic, Alvarez’s novel effectively complicates simple equivalencies between what’s illegal and what’s wrong. Mari’s experience is harrowing, with implied atrocities and immigration raids, but equally full of good people doing the best they can. The two children find hope despite the unhappily realistic conclusions to their troubles, in a story which sees the best in humanity alongside grim realities.
Though it lacks nuance, still a must-read. (Fiction. 9-11)Pub Date: Jan. 13, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-375-85838-3
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2008
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Using the multiple voices that made Bull Run (1995) so absorbing, Fleischman takes readers to a modern inner-city neighborhood and a different sort of battle, as bit by bit the handful of lima beans an immigrant child plants in an empty lot blossoms into a community garden, tended by a notably diverse group of local residents. It's not an easy victory: Toughened by the experience of putting her children through public school, Leona spends several days relentlessly bulling her way into government offices to get the lot's trash hauled away; others address the lack of readily available water, as well as problems with vandals and midnight dumpers; and though decades of waging peace on a small scale have made Sam an expert diplomat, he's unable to prevent racial and ethnic borders from forming. Still, the garden becomes a place where wounds heal, friendships form, and seeds of change are sown. Readers won't gain any great appreciation for the art and science of gardening from this, but they may come away understanding that people can work side by side despite vastly different motives, attitudes, skills, and cultural backgrounds. It's a worthy idea, accompanied by Pedersen's chapter-heading black-and-white portraits, providing advance information about the participants' races and, here and there, ages. (Fiction. 9-11)
Pub Date: May 11, 1997
ISBN: 0-06-027471-9
Page Count: 69
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1997
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