A tightly woven mystery that will leave readers excited to make changes in their communities.
In this novel, a boy and his friends find themselves called upon to rescue an island’s wildlife from imminent disaster.
Every year, anxious Berend “Bear” Houtman visits his grandmother on Oxbow Island in Maine. In this follow-up to Oxbow Island Gang: Winter Crows (2023), readers are treated to a fourth installment of Chalmers’ children’s book series as 12-year-old Bear travels to the island in April. But before he even gets on the ferry from the mainland, he realizes something is wrong: There are ambulances and fireboats everywhere. It isn’t until he reunites with his science-loving best friend, Olivia; his grandmother; and his relative’s neighbors that he finds out a terrible accident involving a longtime island resident has happened. In learning more about it, Bear and his cohorts investigate the site where it occurred, and they find a startling number of dead frogs: “In ten minutes, they had counted four malformed dead frogs, nine normal flattened frogs, and one salamander.” Bear, Olivia, grouchy Director of Public Works Rex, and their friends work together to track down the answers to this environmental mystery while they work to support the accident victims’ return home. In telling this story, Chalmers seamlessly weaves together multiple plotlines involving different island residents in a way that reflects the diversity and strength of the community in the small Maine town. Bear, as a non-native and an enthusiastic learner, provides a helpful entry point for readers interested in local ecology and activism. Hogan’s occasional soft black-and-white pencil illustrations help to provide atmosphere, while her map shows just how cozy the island is. This expertly plotted novel will appeal to older elementary-age readers of novels like Carl Hiaasen’s classic Hoot (2002) and Michele Weber Hurwitz’s Hello From Renn Lake (2020).
A tightly woven mystery that will leave readers excited to make changes in their communities.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 9781633813540
Page Count: 194
Publisher: Maine Authors Publishing
Review Posted Online: March 1, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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An absorbing fantasy centered on a resilient female protagonist facing growth, change, and self-empowerment.
In Florence’s middle-grade fantasy novel, a young girl’s heart is tested in the face of an evil, spreading Darkness.
Eleven-year-old Lydia, “freckle-cheeked and round-eyed, with hair the color of pine bark and fair skin,” is struggling with the knowledge that she has reached the age to apprentice as an herbalist. Lydia is reluctant to leave her beloved, magical Mulberry Glen and her cozy Housetree in the woods—she’ll miss Garder, the Glen’s respected philosopher; her fairy guardian Pit; her human friend Livy; and even the mischievous part-elf, part-imp, part-human twins Zale and Zamilla. But the twins go missing after hearing of a soul-sapping Darkness that has swallowed a forest and is creeping into minds and engulfing entire towns. They have secretly left to find a rare fruit that, it is said, will stop the Darkness if thrown into the heart of the mountain that rises out of the lethal forest. Lydia follows, determined to find the twins before they, too, fall victim to the Darkness. During her journey, accompanied by new friends, she gradually realizes that she herself has a dangerous role to play in the quest to stop the Darkness. In this well-crafted fantasy, Florence skillfully equates the physical manifestation of Darkness with the feelings of insecurity and powerlessness that Lydia first struggles with when thinking of leaving the Glen. Such negative thoughts grow more intrusive the closer she and her friends come to the Darkness—and to Lydia’s ultimate, powerfully rendered test of character, which leads to a satisfyingly realistic, not quite happily-ever-after ending. Highlights include a delightfully haunting, reality-shifting library and a deft sprinkling of Latin throughout the text; Pit’s pet name for Lydia is mea flosculus (“my little flower”). Fine-lined ink drawings introducing each chapter add a pleasing visual element to this well-grounded fairy tale.
An absorbing fantasy centered on a resilient female protagonist facing growth, change, and self-empowerment.Pub Date: Jan. 7, 2025
ISBN: 9781956393095
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Waxwing Books
Review Posted Online: Oct. 14, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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