An environmental message overwhelms the plot in this disappointing time-travel story. Twelve-year-old narrator Trey lives in the Bahamas with his grandparents and seven-year-old brother Lou, who has undiagnosed seizures and never talks. When the brothers’ favorite island spot, Long Pond Cay, is slated to become a major resort, their grandfather protests with no success against the developers, who retaliate by secretly destroying his boats. Intensifying the evil of the developers’ side of the issue, Trey’s negligent father appears as a worker for the developer and threatens to take Trey from his grandparents. In the midst of these disputes, Trey and Lou are mysteriously transported to a city in the future, an environmental horror with no stars, fresh air, or open land. During several trips through time, Lou plays a key part in the future world’s survival, in a strange meeting with Gaia, Mother Earth herself, and an even stranger scene in which Lou takes on a mythological role. While Cooper (King of Shadows, 1999, etc.) writes movingly about the beauty of the Bahamas and earnestly about her concerns for the future, she misses the mark here as a storyteller. The present and future worlds aren’t meaningfully connected nor do the Celtic mythological references fit the surroundings. The issue of the resort is all too easily resolved; the narrator veers into an adult voice in places; and Lou comes across not as a credible seven-year-old but as a literary device. (Fiction. 9-12)
Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-689-84751-3
Page Count: 208
Publisher: McElderry
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2002
Categories: CHILDREN'S SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY
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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
Categories: CHILDREN'S SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY | CHILDREN'S SOCIAL THEMES
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A young tennis champion becomes the target of revenge.
In this sequel to Legacy and the Queen (2019), Legacy Petrin and her friends Javi and Pippa have returned to Legacy’s home province and the orphanage run by her father. With her friends’ help, she is in training to defend her championship when they discover that another player, operating under the protection of High Consul Silla, is presenting herself as Legacy. She is so convincing that the real Legacy is accused of being an imitation. False Legacy has become a hero to the masses, further strengthening Silla’s hold, and it becomes imperative to uncover and defeat her. If Legacy is to win again, she must play her imposter while disguised as someone else. Winning at tennis is not just about money and fame, but resisting Silla’s plans to send more young people into brutal mines with little hope of better lives. Legacy will have to overcome her fears and find the magic that allowed her to claim victory in the past. This story, with its elements of sports, fantasy, and social consciousness that highlight tensions between the powerful and those they prey upon, successfully continues the series conceived by late basketball superstar Bryant. As before, the tennis matches are depicted with pace and spirit. Legacy and Javi have brown skin; most other characters default to White.
A worthy combination of athletic action, the virtues of inner strength, and the importance of friendship. (Fantasy. 9-12)Pub Date: Aug. 24, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-949520-19-4
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Granity Studios
Review Posted Online: July 28, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2021
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