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Hite, Sid
6 Reviews
(3)
YA
Sixteen-year-old New Yorker and diarist Max delivers his pet cat's body to his aunt's Woodstock retreat. There Max meets Zini, an artist who inspires him. Hite's first-person narration is terse and pessimistic until book's end. The most poetic moments come in the final pages as Max waits for Zini and lets down his guard.
Reviewer: Amy Pattee
(3)
YA
After learning that he was adopted as an infant, a sixteen-year-old from small-town Idaho suspects that he is a descendant of King Louis the Fifteenth and Madame de Pompadour. The loosely constructed plot recounts Lewis's ruminations about his identity and his quest to catch a giant trout. A whimsical prose style and eccentric characterizations keep things light and appealing.
Reviewer: Peter D. Sieruta
(4)
4-6
My Name Is America series.
Leaving home because of his abusive stepfather, sixteen-year-old Rufus Rowe finds shelter at a soon-abandoned plantation, where he sees and records events surrounding the Battle of Fredericksburg in 1862. His journal is mostly plausible and accurate, but some observations seem preternaturally wise. An afterword includes black-and-white period photographs.
Reviewer: Frieda F. Bostian
(4)
YA
Sent to work on a relative's farm as punishment for an ill-considered lie, Paul Shackleford comes to appreciate farm life as he investigates a ghost story about the late Hennley Gray, whom he resembles. An anticlimactic conclusion disappoints hopes for this otherwise tantalizing ghost teaser, a highly moral story about discovering the power of one's word.
Reviewer: Anita L. Burkam
(2)
4-6
Civil War veteran Stick and orphan Whittle meet at an isolated campsite along the Chisholm Trail, signaling the beginning of a beautiful friendship and an entertaining adventure. Stick and Whittle plan a raid and, with the help of some genre-appropriate stock characters, rescue Stick's kidnapped sweetheart. Hite's laidback tone leaves no doubt that all will end happily; his tongue-in-cheek telling defines the adventure as a diversionary romp.
Reviewer: Betty Carter
| Horn Book Magazine Issue:
January, 2001
(4)
YA
In a detached, sometimes bitter but rarely boring narrative, Cecil gives an idiosyncratic tour of teen life in his "podunk" hometown of Bricksburg, Virginia, where the big mystery is who defaced the town sign. Despite anticlimactic resolutions to certain plot lines, it is satisfying to watch Cecil gradually shed his cynicism as he falls into a romantic relationship with his best friend's sister.
Reviewer: Christine M. Heppermann
6 reviews
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