Skinnybones and the Wrinkle Queen (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Skinnybones and the Wrinkle Queen Karen Coats Huser, Glen Skinnybones and the Wrinkle Queen. Groundwood/House of Anansi, 2006232p ISBN 0-88899-732-9$16.95 R Gr. 7-10 Disaffected Tamara has been bounced into yet another foster home, but this time she is really going to try to follow her case worker's advice and be more positive. She still skips school to get her real education, though, spending as much time as she can watching fashion programs to prep for a modeling career. When a school service assignment teams her up with Miss Barclay, a cigarillo-smoking, brandy-sneaking elderly woman in a nursing home, they soon figure out that they can use each other to get what they want—Miss Barclay will pay for a weeklong modeling workshop in Vancouver if Tamara will drive her to Seattle for Wagner's Ring Cycle. Knowing that their respective caretakers will never approve, the two pull a Thelma and Louise and almost get away with it. Like Fleischman's Mind's Eye (BCCB 10/99), the novel sets up a likely/unlikely pair, both painfully aware of what they want and the limitations that keep them from it. Unlike Fleischman's pair, however, Miss Barclay and Tamara are equally matched for short tempers and grumpiness, and Miss Barclay turns out to be more unruly than Tamara. Chapters alternate first-person perspectives so readers get a chance to hear all that goes unsaid between the two and to see the generational and economic gaps in taste and values without any outside or heavy-handed arbitration. Both characters emerge as strongly [End Page 173] sympathetic rebels; readers will applaud their outlaw partnership and be glad that Tamara, at least, receives forgiveness and a fresh start. Copyright © 2006 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois