Aug 5, 2011 ARCHIVES | Entertainment | COLUMNS Kevin Henkes
Greenwillow
ISBN 978-0061964176
NA pages
$15.99
Reviewed by Mary Quattlebaum
In a cotton-candy-colored cottage at the edge of the ocean, Alice prepares to celebrate her 10th birthday. Time shimmers with possibility and change. Alice reflects on the frailty of an elderly neighbor, the deep sadness of a cranky young visitor, the vastness of the sky and sea, and her quest for a rare junonia shell. In an existential moment, she walks "alone together" with her loving parents and ponders her identity as distinct from theirs.
Best known for charming picture books ("Lilly's Purple Plastic Purse," "Kitten's First Full Moon"), author Kevin Henkes in "Junonia" turns a precise eye to the delicate examination of a child's psyche. Many contemporary kids' novels are so packed with external action that they offer few glimpses of the quieter but no less dramatic process of individuation, of a child becoming an "I," as Elizabeth Bishop phrased it in her poem "In the Waiting Room." Like Bishop, Henkes carefully attends to such moments, grounding them in small, sensuous details, including, to give one exquisite example, a grill fire "like a snarl of orange scarves." Though internal, the stakes are high. Alice deals with an adult's well-meaning but duplicitous act, confronts her anger at the irritating youngster and figures out how to make amends. As finely shaded as its titular shell, this novel engages the mind and heart.
-- Mary Quattlebaum
Copyright 2011 Washington Post Writers Group
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