Patricia Reilly Giff (1935–2021)

Lily loves to lie. The lies flow fast and easy. Each time she vows not to lie, another one slides right on out of her mouth. Lily just cannot help herself.

The setting is Rockaway, NJ where Lily, her grandmother and father spend idyllic summers. But the summer of 1944 is different and lives are changed because of WWII. Lily's best friend moves to Detroit where her father can build bombs, the seaside boardwalk is empty and Lily's father is going oversees to fight in the war.

Having lost a show more mother in childhood, Lily knows the fear of abandonment and loneliness. When a young Hungarian refugee arrives, Lily learns the unspeakable things Albert experienced in losing his family during Nazi occupation.

Slipping into her habit of pathological lying seems harmless until one places Albert's life in jeopardy.

This 1998 Newbery Honor book is highly recommended. The themes of loss, grief, friendship, the impact of war and the repercussions of actions are all packed into a mere 180 pages. show less

Hollis Woods is afraid, so she runs. She is afraid of abandonment, she is afraid of feeling and she is afraid of commitment. Hollis has suffered tremendously, but has also been loved, but her suffering would not allow her to feel deeply enough to allow that love in, until someone needed her. Through the frailty of Josie, who has a common interest (art) and an authentic need (she is loosing her memory), Hollis learns that each day holds special moments that create pictures worth holding onto show more for a lifetime. She learns to love, and as importantly, to allow herself to be loved.

When children confuse us, rejecting even the kindest invitations, we would be wise to consider that perhaps there are parts of them and their histories that we simply do not understand. Perhaps the need is not to be invited, but rather to be needed. Hollis Woods can serve to remind us of the power of being needed. show less

I thought this was a fun little book, not without flaws, but nevertheless engaging, interesting, and entertaining. Minnie is an orphan who lives with her older brother, Orlando, owner of The Catfish Cafe. She's roughly 10 or 12 years old and allowed a tremendous amount of unsupervised wandering - not typical of today's average kid. Having attempted to get a number of "businesses" off the ground, Minnie has currently hung her hopes on being a detective. Since no one will hire a kid, she finds show more a case of her own to solve right in the neighborhood.

I found the characters and the setting of KIDNAP AT THE CATFISH CAFE to be extremely interesting. While the town is never named, it overlooks "Sharkfin Bay" and boasts a large Russian community. It's clear some people are second and third generation while others are more recent immigrants. Oddly, The Catfish Cafe specializes in southern cooking, which to Orlando, proprieter and chef, means each dish includes some form of peaches. There was quite a lot of discussion of amber, where it comes from and how valued it is within the community. The characters are many and varied; I quite liked the sympathetic depiction of Mrs. Vorr, an elderly woman living on her own.

There's a lot of detail, action, and themes in this little book, sometimes too much for middle grade readers and a book of only 80 pages. There's the fact of Minnie being raised by her brother, Orlando; Orlando's failing restaurant, bizarre recipes, and his interest in a mysterious red-headed lady--who really knows how to cook; references to their deceased parents and a story about how this brother and sister came to be named as they are. There's also the aging Mrs. Vorr, abandoned by her beloved Misha and victimized by a purse snatcher; the clumsy undercover cop, Kitty, who becomes a role model for Minnie; and Cash, the young boy who may or may not be behind the recent thefts, as well as Leo the Lazy, a pathetic man who hangs around, asks for handouts, and thinks wearing a necktie over his t-shirt is "sprucing up." Any of these characters or storylines would have been interesting if they were developed further, but they cannot all be contained comfortably within the framework of such a short novel.

Another thing that I had difficulty with were the names used in the story. There are several boats mentioned frequently, The Comet, The Crab's Legs, The Amber Cat, and The Black Dog, as well as a truck called Lumber Jack. On my first reading, I found it hard to keep all the boats straight and remember which one belonged to whom. It was also disconcerting to me to have a human character named "Kitty" in a story in which an actual cat has such prominance. It's kind of funny to me that I felt so overwhelmed and confused by a kid's chapter book, but if it gave me trouble, it's bound to confuse at least some kids!

On the other hand, I really liked this book because the main characters are interesting and fun; sometimes the story even made me giggle. The community in which Minnie lives is populated with friendly personalities who look out for one another, making everyone seem like a member of a huge extended family. And there's more than one mystery solved by the time the reader reaches the (predictably) happy ending.

I read this book twice, once on my own and again with my niece and nephew. It seemed that like me, they were captivated by the characters and storyline, but sometimes got tripped up and "confuzzled." They do want to pick up the second book in this series, MARY MOON IS MISSING. I want to read it, too.

I also want to take a peek at this author's better known and best-selling Kids of the Polk Street School series. Patricia Reilly Giff has also written several historical fiction novels and the Newbury Honor winners PICTURES OF HOLLIS WOODS and LILY'S CROSSING. I'm particulary interested in reading those! show less

Giff’s 1997 Newbery Honor Book opens in June 1944 with ten-year-old Lily Mollahan and her grandmother packing for their annual summer stay at Rockaway Beach, a vast five-mile stretch on the Rockaway peninsula in the borough of Queens, New York. Lily’s father, “Poppy,” an engineer, is to join them for weekends. (Her mother died from a heart condition when Lily was an infant.)

Unfortunately, when Lily arrives in Rockaway she promptly learns that her longtime summer friend, Margaret show more Dillon, is moving away to Michigan, at least for the time being. Her dad has taken a job on a bomber-plane assembly line there. Before leaving, Margaret gives Lily, a budding writer, the key to the Dillon summer place, so she can escape her sometimes bossy grandmother and work on her stories in its wonderful attic room. A worse announcement comes soon after: Poppy is leaving for Europe, not as a soldier, but because his engineering skills are needed. He promises he will write to his daughter and somehow let her know where he is. Lily’s grief is intense, and she angrily refuses to see him off, an act that will haunt her through a very eventful summer.

Most of the action of the novel is concerned with Lily’s growing friendship with a war refugee from Budapest, the nephew of the Mollahan’s neighbours, Mr. and Mrs. Orban. Albert has been through a traumatic time. Two years earlier, his grandmother took charge of him and his little sister, Ruth, just before their parents were arrested for publishing a newspaper that was critical of Hitler, an act which cost them their lives. The children’s grandmother arranged to have them smuggled west across Europe to France and, hopefully, to America. Unfortunately, by the time the siblings reached France, Ruth was seriously ill with measles. She had to be left behind with an order of nuns. Now Albert is deeply distressed by the fact that he did not say goodbye to Ruth.He’s further tormented by the knowledge that he could have stayed in France with her. Instead, because he was so terrified of the Nazis, he'd chosen to leave for North America without her.

The climax of the novel hinges on a lie that Lily tells Albert, which makes him believe he might be able to get himself aboard a troopship to Europe so that he can find Ruth. All of this may sound a little heavy going for young readers, but Giff has a delicate touch; lighter incidents, including the discovery of a marmalade kitten, counterbalance the serious ones.

The many warm and emotionally satisfying moments in the novel also compensate for a few events that might raise the eyebrows of adult readers. Giff’s child characters have a remarkable amount of freedom compared to most of today's kids. When I consider my own and my friends’ childhood experiences, I marvel at, and am grateful for, the benign neglect of our parents, which gave us the freedom to roam. Giff’s main characters have freedom to roam and then some. They glide off in rowboats, sometimes in the middle of the night, and they go swimming in rough water without any adult supervision—things even the relaxed parents I knew would never have permitted, even though their kids were capable swimmers. Some of today’s helicopter parents might be alarmed by the ideas this novel might give to young readers!

These quibbles aside, Giff’s book is generally a rewarding piece of historical fiction about the power of friendship and family love. Recommended.

Rating: 3.5 rounded down show less