From: Susan Lempke <slempke>
Date: Thu, 14 Dec 2000 11:31:30 -0600

One of my favorites from last year was Sharon Creech's THE WANDERER, about a girl making an ocean crossing on a sailboat with her two male cousins and her uncles. Creech's theme isn't at all subtle, with the literal and figurative "voyages," but I loved the narration. The story is narrated by Sophie and her cousin Cody, and Creech does a superb job of restricting the information the reader gets to those points of view, with each narrator shedding light on the other.

My other favorite fiction book this year was Jack Gantos' JOEY PIGZA LOSES CONTROL. Gantos is always a daring writer, and his portrayal of Joey's father is bone-chillingly vivid. Joey is such a compelling character as he struggles to hold onto the skills he has learned in self-control, and I love that at the end, Joey didn't have a huge, sentimental reconciliation with his dad. Instead, the reader got the sense that Joey is a strong little person, and he will be okay despite his father.

Count me in as another huge OLIVIA fan--I laugh out loud every time I look at it, and always notice another detail of how skillfully Falconer controls the perspective and the line.

HOW DO DINOSAURS SAY GOODNIGHT is a particularly satisfying picture book because it works on so many different levels. The text rings absolutely true, and Teague's illustrations blend the real dinosaurs with authentic child behavior in a very funny way.

Finally, I have to say that in all honesty, Amato's THE WORD EATER seemed to me to have the hallmarks of a first novel from a potentially good writer--it had some very intriguing ideas, but overall too much stuff being crammed into one book. It might have worked better for me if it were pitched at an older age group where the ideas could have been fleshed out and deepened. If I were looking for the next FRINDLE, I would pick Etchemendy's THE POWER OF UN rather than this one.

  --Susan Dove Lempke
Received on Thu 14 Dec 2000 11:31:30 AM CST