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Summary
Summary
Critically acclaimed author and artist Kevin Henkes has earned an impressive collection of accolades for his work, including a Newbery Honor and a Caldecott Medal. In Junonia, Alice Rice is returning to the beach cottage where she always spends her birthdays. Her friends and family will be there, and she's certain a big party is planned. But most importantly, she hopes this will finally be the year she finds the most precious prize any shell collector could ever want-the beautiful and incredibly rare junonia.
Author Notes
Kevin Henkes was born in Racine, Wis. in 1960 and graduated from the University of Wisconsin at Madison. One of four children in his family, Henkes grew up with aspirations of being an artist. As a junior in high school, one of Henkes's teachers awakened his interest in writing. Falling in love with both writing and drawing, Henkes realized that he could do both at the same time as a children's book author and illustrator.
At the age of 19, Henkes went to New York City to get his first book, All Alone, published. Since that time, he has written and illustrated dozens of picture books including Chrysanthemum, Protecting Marie, and A Weekend with Wendell. A recurring character in several of Henkes's books is Lily, an outrageous, yet delightful, individualist. Lily finds herself the center of attention in the books Chester's Way, Julius, the Baby of the World, and Lily's Purple Plastic Purse.
A Weekend With Wendell was named Children's Choice Book by the Children's Book Council in 1986. He recieved the Elizabeth Burr Award for Words of Stone in 1993. Owen was named a Caldicott Honor in 1994. The Year of Billy Miller was named a Newbery Honor book in 2014.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (6)
Publisher's Weekly Review
In this introspective story about a child's search for a rare shell, Henkes (Bird Lake Moon) again displays his ability to find profound meaning in ordinary events. Every year Alice Rice and her parents take a trip to Florida's Sanibel Island, but this year things are different. Some of the people Alice is looking forward to seeing are missing, and the neighboring cabin usually rented to a fun artist from New York is now occupied by a friend of Alice's mother, her new boyfriend, and his moody and disruptive six-year-old daughter. Swallowing her disappointment, Alice still believes that her vacation will be a success if only she can find the rare shell she most covets, the junonia ("After all, she was going to be ten. Finding a junonia would be the perfect gift"). Like her disappointments, Alice's discoveries aren't what she expects, but her understanding of people-both old friends and new acquaintances-deepens during the process. Readers will empathize with Alice's frustrations and relish her moments of joy. Images of the beach and the moving, meaningful interactions between characters will linger with readers. Ages 8-12. (June) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Horn Book Review
A birthday party, a spilled glass of milk, a plastic gelato spoon, a chance hurtful remark: of such small, ordinary elements Henkes builds a story rooted in the closely observed perceptions of Alice, holidaying with her parents in a cottage on the Florida coast. The holiday is an annual event, steeped in tradition. This year, however, there are changes in personnel, and Alice balances between familiarity and novelty, coziness and independence, self-centeredness and altruism -- the balance beam of turning ten. The two-strand plot involves Alice's dream of finding a junonia shell to add to her collection and a parallel story of a traumatized six-year-old whose mother has just abandoned her family. Along these two strands Henkes traces a kind of EKG of the delicate changes in Alice's moods, from the particular pleasure of the smell of your own knee after a day at the beach to the shameful exhilaration of watching somebody else have a temper tantrum to the potent emotional mixture of sad and angry. Henkes adopts a formal "telling" voice in his narrative, reassuring if slightly austere. The result is the opposite of a high-concept book, its power not in an overall idea or conflict but in a fully realized, respectful portrait of a childhood milestone. sarah ellis (c) Copyright 2011. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Booklist Review
*Starred Review* Every year in February, Alice and her parents spend the week of her birthday on Sanibel Island, far from the Wisconsin winter. An only child, Alice revels in her family's comfortable traditions and routines, especially on Sanibel, where they visit the same grown-up friends, stay in the same cottage, and hunt for the same, elusive junonia shell. This year, though, Alice is turning 10, and her entry into double digits isn't the only change on the Florida horizon. A child raised among adults, Alice is mature and acquiescent yet comfortable enough in her childhood to resist the approach of adolescence. Henkes offers a quiet evocation of the simple jealousies and generosities of childhood, as Alice struggles to relinquish her position as perennial darling and try on the mantle of independence. Charming spot illustrations, many featuring beach motifs, begin each short chapter, adding to the palpable seaside atmosphere. The problems Alice faces are never more serious than the absence of a regular family friend or the presence of a tantrum-prone newcomer, but they are still deeply resonant. With tender observations and sensory details, Henkes creates a memorable young individual whose arcadian growing up is authentic and pitch-perfect.--Barthelmess, Thom Copyright 2010 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
SOMETIMES things don't happen exactly the way you want them to happen. In this gentle tale of growing up, 9-year-old Alice Rice learns that even though she's growing older, life is seldom about achieving perfection. She senses this in the very first paragraph of the story, by Kevin Henkes, a Newbery Honor winner and Caldecott medalist, as her family crosses the bridge that connects the Florida mainland to the island they visit every winter. Alice, who ordinarily enjoys being suspended between two worlds, suddenly feels strange. "Her breath caught high in her chest and she became light-headed. It seemed as though there wasn't enough air in the car." Alice hopes the dizzying moment isn't a bad omen, because she has high expectations for her family's annual vacation. She desperately hopes she finds a junonia, one of the rarest seashells in her shell guide. Henkes perfectly captures Alice's angst as she spins between the little-girlhood she's leaving behind and the adolescence that looms in from of her, and he expertly reveals introspective Alice's musings. Henkes knows that Alice, like many girls her age, carries plenty of things in her mind - and her heart - that she seldom speaks of. She mulls them over privately, and in Henkes's hands, eloquently. She spends part of her vacation contemplating God, imagining a benevolent female being who, if Alice were in charge, would live in the ocean and be named Junonia. Junonia would be able to make Alice's speck, a mole near her mouth, disappear and help Mallory, a troubled 6-year-old visiting the island. Alice eventually absorbs Junonia's wisdom. To see herself as rare as a junonia is a spectacular discovery, one delivered with a gentle and very pleasant jolt. Ann M. Martin's new book, "Ten Rules for Living With My Sister," is due out this fall.
School Library Journal Review
Gr 3-6-Alice is planning to celebrate her 10th birthday on her family's annual vacation to Sanibel Island, Florida. This year, her mother's friend is coming with her boyfriend and her six-year-old daughter Mallory who is troubled and impetuous. Stina Nielsen beautifully narrates Kevin Henkes's book (Greenwillow, 2011). She utilizes a variety of vocal inflections and perfectly conveys the variety of adolescent emotions Alice experiences-from the euphoric excitement and anticipation she feels as her family arrives at their rental cottage to the bitter disappointment she experiences upon learning some of the other annual vacationers won't be present this year to her quest for the elusive junonia shell. Listeners will feel that they are walking alongside Alice on her journey.-Cathie Bashaw Morton, Millbrook Central School District, NY (c) Copyright 2011. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
Every year, Alice celebrates her birthday week in February with her parents in a cottage on the beach in Sanibel, far from her snowy Wisconsin home.This year, as she turns 10, the expected holiday company varies just enough to feel odd and challenging: The neighboring Wishmeiers' grandchildren didn't come; another neighbor is snowbound in New York; "aunt" Kate arrives with a new boyfriend and his six-year-old daughter in tow. Alice's longed-for find, a prized junonia mollusk shell, never quite materializes as expected. Henkes' deceptively economical language is rich and complex, cognizant of the ways that the world of adults reveals itself to children, aware of the emotional weight of objects. The third-person narration offers a sense of depth and story beyond the borders of the novel itself, providing distance enough for readers to draw their own conclusions. The author's own drawings grace the cover and chapter openings; the overall book design is elegant and supremely comfortable for middle-grade readers. An only child surrounded by affection, routine and attention, Alice has the space to realize that life can be an adventure experienced independently, even while held closely by those one loves.Very few writers have such a keen understanding of the emotional lives of children; here Henkes is at the top of his game. (Fiction. 8-12)]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
