For eight-year-old Barney (short for Barnaby), being haunted begins with that "faint dizzy twist in the world around him, the thin singing drone [in] his ear" . . . then a figure slowly forming out of the air, lamenting in a sort husky voice, "Barnaby's dead! Barnaby's dead! I'm going to be very lonely." When Barney learns later that day that great-uncle Barnaby bas just died, he gasps "I thought it was me!" and faints away. But the haunting continues, with footsteps coming nearer and the voice insisting that Barney must go with him. "You should see yourself," says notebook-scribbling older sister Tabitha, a future novelist who chatters incessantly. "You're really starting to look haunted, you know . . . sort of yellowish and transparent like cooking oil, and your eyes are funny." The eyes, Barney too has noticed, are sometimes not his own: He comes to feel "like a coat or jacket his Great-Uncle Cole can put on and off at will." For by then the children have learned from Grandfather Scholar and his brother, Great-Uncle Guy and Great-Uncle Alberic of a fifth brother, Great-Uncle Cole, who vanished from the scene at twelve. New Great-Uncle Guy reveals to a concerned Tabitha that Cole is a magician; that his order-loving mother, the still-imperious Great-Granny, fought and rejected him from his birth; and that Cole is still alive. Guy, a pediatrician, offers Tabitha a valid psychological explanation for Barney's haunting, which manages to strengthen the story without explaining away the haunting: Even Guy himself doesn't really believe it. The confrontation comes when Cole shows up to claim Barney, whom he believes to be a fellow magician—and Troy, the oldest of the children and the silent, reclusive, and "eerily" tidy one, unmasks the repressive Great-Granny as a magician and, in a series of razzle-dazzle transformations, reveals herself as another. (Of her father's reaction, Troy says later, "I can feel him looking at me and—I don't know—shrinking away. . . . He'll never get over it altogether.") You may have guessed her secret early on, or find the magic less impressive once it's out. But Mahy's deftly penetrating and delightfully phrased observations of the family don't slacken. (In the end we have poor Tabitha, crushed that she's turned out to be the only "ordinary" one, but busy interviewing Cole and taking notes on the whole affair.) Most compellingly, Mahy projects the haunting with such imaginative force and seriousness that you'll hear those footsteps and that husky voice as Barney does, just as you see Barney's pale transparent face and strange bruised eyes through Tabitha's watchful ones.
Pub Date: Oct. 22, 1982
ISBN: 0141315830
Page Count: -
Publisher: Atheneum
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1982
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
A nice but not requisite purchase.
A retelling of the classic fairy tale in board-book format and with a Mexican setting.
Though simplified for a younger audience, the text still relates the well-known tale: mean-spirited stepmother, spoiled stepsisters, overworked Cinderella, fairy godmother, glass slipper, charming prince, and, of course, happily-ever-after. What gives this book its flavor is the artwork. Within its Mexican setting, the characters are olive-skinned and dark-haired. Cultural references abound, as when a messenger comes carrying a banner announcing a “FIESTA” in beautiful papel picado. Cinderella is the picture of beauty, with her hair up in ribbons and flowers and her typically Mexican many-layered white dress. The companion volume, Snow White, set in Japan and illustrated by Misa Saburi, follows the same format. The simplified text tells the story of the beautiful princess sent to the forest by her wicked stepmother to be “done away with,” the dwarves that take her in, and, eventually, the happily-ever-after ending. Here too, what gives the book its flavor is the artwork. The characters wear traditional clothing, and the dwarves’ house has the requisite shoji screens, tatami mats and cherry blossoms in the garden. The puzzling question is, why the board-book presentation? Though the text is simplified, it’s still beyond the board-book audience, and the illustrations deserve full-size books.
A nice but not requisite purchase. (Board book/fairy tale. 3-5)Pub Date: Sept. 13, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4814-7915-8
Page Count: 24
Publisher: Little Simon/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Oct. 11, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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