A quiet tale about finding your own voice.
A gifted wordsmith wonders if her opera-singer mom misses her career.
Fourth-grader Sylvie Bloom lives with her parents and younger brother on a Wyoming farm. Her mother was once an internationally renowned soprano but now sings only to cows, chickens, and sheep. This summer, talented Sylvie is assigned by her teacher to compose a daily column about local events for the town newspaper, employing any writing style she chooses. Through her warm, witty, and sharply observed comments and poetry, Sylvie affects neighbors’ lives and helps bring about important changes in her community. Meanwhile, an invitation for the whole family from a famous tenor, mom’s former duet partner, to his upcoming concert makes Sylvie worry that her mother unwillingly sacrificed her career for her kids and regrets abandoning her glamorous past. Hints from several friendly, wise adults that she already understands her mother’s motives but hasn’t yet acknowledged them to herself make Sylvie uneasy. This is a sweet, folksy, leisurely paced novel with gentle humor about family closeness and a young girl who discovers that practicing and sharing one’s talents is actually quite simple. Characters default to white. MacLachlan’s economic writing is sure and knowing, and her characters are likable and fully realized. Some readers may wonder, however, why it seemingly never before occurred to Sylvie just to ask her mother about her decision to forgo the stage.
A quiet tale about finding your own voice. (Fiction. 8-11)Pub Date: Sept. 12, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-4814-7252-4
Page Count: 128
Publisher: McElderry
Review Posted Online: July 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2017
A fine emotional stretch within reach of the intended audience.
When siblings Jessie and Evan (The Lemonade War, 2007, and The Lemonade Crime, 2011) accompany their mother on the time-honored midwinter holiday visit to their grandmother’s home in the mountains, the changes are alarming.
Fire damage to the house and Grandma’s inability to recognize Evan are as disquieting as the disappearance of the iron bell, hung long ago by their grandmother on Lowell Hill and traditionally rung at the New Year. Davies keeps a tight focus on the children: Points of view switch between Evan, with his empathetic and emotional approach to understanding his world, and Jessie, for whom routine is essential and change a puzzle to be worked out. When Grandma ventures out into the snow just before twilight, it is Evan who realizes the danger and manages to find a way to rescue her. Jessie, determined to solve the mystery of the missing bell, enlists the help of Grandma's young neighbor Maxwell, with his unusual habitual gestures and his surprising ability to solve jigsaw puzzles. She is unprepared, however, for the terror of seeing the neighbor boys preparing a mechanical torture device to tear a live frog to pieces. Each of the siblings brings a personal resilience and heroism to the resolution.
A fine emotional stretch within reach of the intended audience. (Fiction. 8-11)Pub Date: May 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-547-56737-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: March 13, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2012
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Readers will enjoy this sequel from a plot perspective and will learn how to play-act a trial, though they may not engage...
This sequel to The Lemonade War (2007), picking up just a few days later, focuses on how the fourth graders take justice into their own hands after learning that the main suspect in the case of the missing lemonade-stand money now owns the latest in game-box technology.
Siblings Evan and Jessie (who skipped third grade because of her precocity) are sure Scott Spencer stole the $208 from Evan’s shorts and want revenge, especially as Scott’s new toy makes him the most popular kid in class, despite his personal shortcomings. Jessie’s solution is to orchestrate a full-blown trial by jury after school, while Evan prefers to challenge Scott in basketball. Neither channel proves satisfactory for the two protagonists (whose rational and emotional reactions are followed throughout the third-person narrative), though, ultimately, the matter is resolved. Set during the week of Yom Kippur, the story raises beginning questions of fairness, integrity, sin and atonement. Like John Grisham's Theodore Boone, Kid Lawyer (2010), much of the book is taken up with introducing courtroom proceedings for a fourth-grade level of understanding. Chapter headings provide definitions (“due diligence,” “circumstantial evidence,” etc.) and explanation cards/documents drawn by Jessie are interspersed.
Readers will enjoy this sequel from a plot perspective and will learn how to play-act a trial, though they may not engage with the characters enough to care about how the justice actually pans out. (Fiction. 8-10)Pub Date: May 2, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-547-27967-1
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: April 5, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2011
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