A hard truth for hard times.
A bench and a closed door mark the milestones in an excited child’s life.
The child grows older as they faithfully await a beloved uncle who never shows. As the protagonist sits watching the door, they excitedly note the things they’ll tell their uncle about: their progress in school, an upcoming move, their new son. In scene after scene, time trundles on as the child evolves into a teen and then an adult and finally to nothing but a memory in the fruitless anticipation of a dream never realized. The uncle, it is later explained, has become one of the “disappeared.” Santana Camargo’s deceptively simple black line drawings against stark white paper allow for no meandering of attention. The protagonist’s—and readers’—focus is on the door that remains shut. Each unwaveringly hopeful line begins with “Great!” in anticipation of the visit (“Great! Then I can tell him about this girl that I like”)—and in contrast to the unseen bleak reality. The author’s unsentimental bilingual text, in English and Spanish, gives no hint as to the reason behind the protagonist’s continued pining—until the afterword, which states that though people have disappeared throughout history, during the Cold War, many governments began using the practice as a “systematic instrument of terror.” Though, according to the backmatter, this story takes place in South America, Santana Camargo notes that people have been disappeared in other places, such as Indonesia. The protagonist has few facial figures and skin the color of the page. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
A hard truth for hard times. (Picture book. 9-11)Pub Date: Aug. 30, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-77840-006-3
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Aldana Libros/Greystone Kids
Review Posted Online: July 26, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
Certain to elicit both gales of giggles and winces of sympathy (not to mention recognition) from young readers.
First volume of a planned three, this edited version of an ongoing online serial records a middle-school everykid’s triumphs and (more often) tribulations through the course of a school year.
Largely through his own fault, mishaps seem to plague Greg at every turn, from the minor freak-outs of finding himself permanently seated in class between two pierced stoners and then being saddled with his mom for a substitute teacher, to being forced to wrestle in gym with a weird classmate who has invited him to view his “secret freckle.” Presented in a mix of legible “hand-lettered” text and lots of simple cartoon illustrations with the punch lines often in dialogue balloons, Greg’s escapades, unwavering self-interest and sardonic commentary are a hoot and a half.
Certain to elicit both gales of giggles and winces of sympathy (not to mention recognition) from young readers. (Fiction. 9-11)Pub Date: April 1, 2007
ISBN: 0-8109-9313-9
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Amulet/Abrams
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2007
SEEN & HEARD
PERSPECTIVES
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