A well-meaning but belabored recognition of introverts, artists, and activists.
An introverted boy fights to save an empty lot from auction.
Eleven-and-a-half-year-old Ware can’t wait to spend the Florida summer with his grandmother, enjoying “long hours free and alone.” Other adults—including his overprotective, hyperefficient mother and sports-loving father—discourage his being “off in his own world.” But when his grandmother takes a fall, he must trade privacy for “Meaningful Social Interaction” in the Summer Rec program. He finds sanctuary in nearby church ruins, where he meets cynical, secretive Jolene and bird activist Ashley. When the property is slated for auction, medieval-history buff Ware invokes the “Knights’ Code”—a feminist but nonetheless romanticized version of the code of chivalry—resolving to “be always the champion of the Right and the Good” and defend their refuge. Victory, however, takes unexpected forms. Though Pennypacker’s exploration of what “fairness” means is thought-provoking, one-dimensional characterization weakens such powerful themes as abuse, self-advocacy, and self-acceptance. Tough-but-wounded Jolene is little more than a foil for the nearly angelic Ware, whose acute empathy even perceives a cut plant’s “cry of betrayal.” (The intense pain his empathy causes him goes unexamined.) Though introverted or sensitive kids may recognize Ware’s poignant struggles to connect with his parents, his heavy-handed portrayal—which his uncle folds neatly into the sensitive-artist trope—blunts some emotional impact. Most characters, including the kids, appear white; a supportive grocer is Greek.
A well-meaning but belabored recognition of introverts, artists, and activists. (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Feb. 4, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-06-269895-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Balzer + Bray/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Nov. 23, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
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
Funny and endearing, though incomplete characterizations provoke questions.
An isolated class of misfits and a teacher on the edge of retirement are paired together for a year of (supposed) failure.
Zachary Kermit, a 55-year-old teacher, has been haunted for the last 27 years by a student cheating scandal that has earned him the derision of his colleagues and killed his teaching spirit. So when he is assigned to teach the Self-Contained Special Eighth-Grade Class—a dumping ground for “the Unteachables,” students with “behavior issues, learning problems, juvenile delinquents”—he is unfazed, as he is only a year away from early retirement. His relationship with his seven students—diverse in temperament, circumstance, and ability—will be one of “uncomfortable roommates” until June. But when Mr. Kermit unexpectedly stands up for a student, the kids of SCS-8 notice his sense of “justice and fairness.” Mr. Kermit finds he may even care a little about them, and they start to care back in their own way, turning a corner and bringing along a few ghosts from Mr. Kermit’s past. Writing in the alternating voices of Mr. Kermit, most of his students, and two administrators, Korman spins a narrative of redemption and belief in exceeding self-expectations. Naming conventions indicate characters of different ethnic backgrounds, but the book subscribes to a white default. The two students who do not narrate may be students of color, and their characterizations subtly—though arguably inadequately—demonstrate the danger of preconceptions.
Funny and endearing, though incomplete characterizations provoke questions. (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Jan. 8, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-06-256388-0
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Balzer + Bray/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Sept. 16, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2018
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