Review: Short by Holly Goldberg Sloan

Short

by Holly Goldberg Sloan

PENGUIN GROUP Penguin Young Readers Group

Dial Books

Children's Fiction , Middle Grade

As a kid, after school, I'd stop by Mom's classroom, and if she didn't have me grading her papers or cutting something out or cleaning something up, I read her books. At first my favorites were the ones with unreal illustrations. Eventually, I grew curious about the ones I avoided. Sometimes I was right, sometimes not,

I like 99.9% of kids and kids' books are like a dip back into childhood. Some writers like Neil Gaiman and L. Frank Baum have special voices that tease and charm back the magic of childhood from you.

So my primary desire is to fall in love with every kid's book--although I obviously prejudices that favor the imaginative variety.

This one starts out promisingly as the child protagonist is irked by her parents' comment that it's good that she's a short female, rather than a short male, but the story gets derailed for two chapters as she meanders, visits the piano lady and her brother without promising a goal or a problem that gets tackled except indirectly.

The voice has some charm in the sense that complainers can have for a short time but lacks full development. Maybe it's too much to ask for a child to be developed as a character.

This didn't click for me until our protagonist gets accepted as a munchkin in the play for The Wizard of Oz--and really only when Shawn Barr shows up, a director who is short, along with those affected by dwarfism. Plenty of readers found it worthwhile. If you do get bogged down, try skipping ahead to chapter 3.