From Publishers Weekly
Mack's first novel covers familiar ground, but she weaves together enough powerful symbols and striking images to make for a vibrant showing. Rory loves getting drawing lessons from her artist father. He teaches her to see objects for what they are--and to use her imagination to create the world that she wants. When he moves out on her mother and her, Rory feels betrayed and rejected. She can no longer draw without his hand to guide her. Even when her father finally tries to explain why he left, Rory's head feels "muddy, like a bucket of dirty paintbrush water." Only following a climactic confrontation with her father does Rory learn to use his lessons to start painting her own world, both literally and figuratively. The plot is thin and the conclusion predictable, but Mack's images are memorable, such as Rory's stomachache that feels "like thread pulled too taut through a sweater." Some metaphors are obvious (e.g., the actually dead family tree), but the consistent use of colors in place of heavy analysis is effective in reflecting the way that Rory sees the world. Ages 10-up. (Mar.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From School Library Journal
Grade 6-8-Rory's artistic talent has been nurtured at home and at school. Her father is a painter who has given her lessons since she was five. Now that she is a seventh grader, they have plans to paint a mural for her mother as a birthday present, but this idea is derailed when her parents separate. Rory then ceases to produce any art at all and cuts relations off with her best friend, Nicky, as well as her art teacher, secluding herself from all activities except brooding. A couple of months of such isolation come to a head when she finally confides in Nicky, and then confronts her father. Rory's precocious talent is both credible and engaging, whether or not readers have firsthand experience with the special vision a painter needs to bring life from the world to canvas or paper. The problems faced by Rory's parents are complex but comprehensible to their daughter and her peers (and to young teen readers who will appreciate the strengths of this first novel). Nicky is neither clone nor backup choir to the protagonist, but a distinct and rounded girl whose supportive abilities-and limitations-are believable. Mack provides excellent characterizations of both adults and adolescents, a moving and well-paced plot, and exquisitely interwoven themes of aesthetics and the multifaceted need for independence that humans of all ages can experience.
Francisca Goldsmith, Berkeley Public Library, CA Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.
