Oddly loquacious, brusque, and extremely observant, Shelby's locally famous for solving mysteries. begins inauspiciously, as before he's even finished moving in, his frizzy-haired neighbor blows something up: " BOOM!" But John's great at making friends, and Shelby certainly seems like an interesting kid to know.
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Now, with his parents' divorce still fresh, the boy who's lived only on military bases must explore the wilds of Harlem. John's an Army brat who's lived in four states already. Medically, both squicky and hopeful emotionally, unbelievably squeaky-clean.Ī modern Sherlock Holmes retelling brings an 11-year-old black John Watson into the sphere of know-it-all 9-year-old white detective Shelby Holmes. Maddie and most characters are white one cringe-inducing hallucinatory surgery dream involves “chanting island natives” and a “witch doctor lady.” Her most frequent commentary about the tumor, having her skull opened, and the possibility of death is “Boo” or “Super boo.” She even shoulders the bully’s redemption. She’s frightened but never acts out, snaps, or resists. The authors-parents of a real-life Maddie who really had a brain tumor-imbue fictional Maddie’s first-person narration with quirky turns of phrase (“For the love of potatoes!”) and whimsy (she imagines her medical battles as epic fantasy fights and pretends MRI stands for Mustard Rat from Indiana or Mustaches Rock Importantly), but they also portray her as a model sick kid. The descriptions of surgery aren’t for the faint of heart. The tumor’s not malignant, but it-or the surgeries-could cause sight loss, personality change, or death. She has two surgeries, the first successful, the second taking place after the book’s end, leaving readers hanging. But recent dysfunctions in Maddie’s arm and leg mean, stunningly, that she has a brain tumor. Kids at school are nice (except one whom readers will see instantly is a bully) soon they’ll get to perform Shakespeare scenes in a unit they’ve all been looking forward to. Maddie likes potatoes and fake mustaches.
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However the compelling fitness of theme and event and the apt but unexpected imagery (the opening sentences compare the first week in August when this takes place to "the highest seat of a Ferris wheel when it pauses in its turning") help to justify the extravagant early assertion that had the secret about to be revealed been known at the time of the action, the very earth "would have trembled on its axis like a beetle on a pin." 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.
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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. 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.