Sleuthing aplenty but more character- than conundrum-driven.
Old photos of a boy in a coffin lead two young Ohio gumshoes into a web of secrets.
A mystery involving a possibly haunted funeral home owned by a newly arrived family puts the nerves as well as the investigative skills of outgoing Nevaeh Greevey and shy, cerebral Colin Creedmont to the test in this sequel to The Secret Letters (2022). Not only does a complex tale dating back decades ultimately come to light in long-hidden letters, news stories, pictures, and keepsakes, but the plot features spooky rummaging through the funeral home’s cluttered attic and a graveyard visit. There’s also a familial connection, as the parents of both amateur sleuths run house-clearing operations—formerly as rivals with very different ideas of what constitutes “junk” and now in a contentious partnership. But since Haddix focuses largely on her protagonists’ thoughts, reactions, and attitudes in shaping the narrative, her tale has a distinctly introspective turn—particularly after Colin learns something about the father he’s never met. Readers seeking a meaty mystery solved by clues and deduction will find one, but it sometimes takes second fiddle to developments within and between members of a mostly white cast. The blended family that moves into the funeral home is implied to be multiracial. One elderly source of information exhibits clear signs of dementia, which the author discusses, along with funeral customs and other relevant topics, in a lengthy afterword.
Sleuthing aplenty but more character- than conundrum-driven. (Mystery. 8-12)Pub Date: Sept. 12, 2023
ISBN: 9780063089815
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Katherine Tegen/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 13, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The three way chats, in which they are joined by other animals, about web spinning, themselves, other humans—are as often...
A successful juvenile by the beloved New Yorker writer portrays a farm episode with an imaginative twist that makes a poignant, humorous story of a pig, a spider and a little girl.
Young Fern Arable pleads for the life of runt piglet Wilbur and gets her father to sell him to a neighbor, Mr. Zuckerman. Daily, Fern visits the Zuckermans to sit and muse with Wilbur and with the clever pen spider Charlotte, who befriends him when he is lonely and downcast. At the news of Wilbur's forthcoming slaughter, campaigning Charlotte, to the astonishment of people for miles around, spins words in her web. "Some Pig" comes first. Then "Terrific"—then "Radiant". The last word, when Wilbur is about to win a show prize and Charlotte is about to die from building her egg sac, is "Humble". And as the wonderful Charlotte does die, the sadness is tempered by the promise of more spiders next spring.
The three way chats, in which they are joined by other animals, about web spinning, themselves, other humans—are as often informative as amusing, and the whole tenor of appealing wit and pathos will make fine entertainment for reading aloud, too.Pub Date: Oct. 15, 1952
ISBN: 978-0-06-026385-0
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1952
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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