Comme frères

From School Library Journal

Grade 5-8-Thirteen-year-old Ben, mentioned in Crossing Jordan (Peachtree, 2000) as Cass's childhood friend, narrates this story. Here, the two are developing romantic feelings for one another, although Cass makes but a brief appearance. Ben goes with his family to the Florida Keys for Christmas to mind his uncle's marina. He meets bold and brassy Mica, 11, who lives on a boat with her alcoholic, inattentive father, a marine biologist; her mother is supposedly a famous ballerina "on The Continent." She takes over the family's holiday. She knows the Latin name for seemingly every species of ocean life, motors around the mangroves in a Zodiac, and takes Ben and his younger brother on myriad adventures, including the inevitable one where they almost get lost at sea. He continues to think of Cass, back home in Tallahassee, and the special present he left for her. Longer and slower than the earlier title, and not as compelling, this book has trouble finding a focus as it is partly about child neglect, sibling rivalry, and oceanography, and is also a coming-of-age story.
Debbie Whitbeck, West Ottawa Public Schools, Holland, MI
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc. --Ce texte fait référence à l'édition Relié.

Booklist

Gr. 5-8. Thirteen-year-old Ben Floyd and his seven-year-old brother, Cody, can't wait to spend Christmas in the Florida Keys as their parents watch over a family-run marina. Ben knows he'll have to keep an eye on Cody, who can't swim, but he's not prepared when a marine biologist and his 11-year-old daughter, Mica, dock and settle in for the holidays: "My big vacation began to fold up small." Initially, Ben envies Mica's freedom (correspondence school, island hopping, and helping her father collect specimens), and he resents how easily his parents embrace her. Gradually, however, he realizes that Mica, with her distant, hard-drinking father, yearns for a loving family like his own. As in Fogelin's previous novels, Crossing Jordan (2000) and Anna Casey's Place in the World (2001), this story has plenty of action, but it's the emotional drama, revealed in funny, realistic dialogue and spot-on descriptions, that distinguish the novel. Readers just leaping into adolescence will easily connect with Ben, who is both sharply observant of and bewildered by the adult world and his own place in it. Gillian Engberg
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --Ce texte fait référence à l'édition Relié.