From School Library Journal
Gr 5-8 Carrots and Miggle, cousins of very different backgrounds and temperaments, are forced to live together when Miggle is orphaned. Carrots is an independent, hard-working, introspective girl who dislikes change; Miggle is a haughty, proper child who is appalled at the prospect of working on the east Texas dairy farm. While details of farm life are realistic and sometimes fascinating, the problems with this book are many. There is no plot, just incidents from the first year that the girls live together. Characters are poorly developed. Miggle is more like a caricature of a British imperialist condescending to the natives than a real child, and Carrots' thoughts and dialogue are too detached and analytical to read well or credibly. For instance, when Carrots thinks of her classmate's interest in makeup, she ``longed to pull out a handful of her own self-sufficiency and hand it to Louise.'' Lengthy expository passages throughout let readers know about characters' backgrounds and changes in their thinkingchanges that readers don't see develop. The expected change in the two girls' attitude does come at the endafter a lengthy psychological self-analysis. Everything's over-analyzed and too pat here. David Gale, ``School Library Journal''
Copyright 1986 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
