Some of the Kinder Planets

Joan Buchanan is a children’s storyteller and author of Taking Care of
My Cold and What If I Were in Charge?

This is a collection of well-honed but meaty short stories for 10- to
12-year-olds. Tim Wynne-Jones writes clear, consistent, touching prose.
He also ends stories neatly, a difficult feat in this genre. Although
the tone, voice, and concerns are very much those of the aforementioned
age group, adults will enjoy these stories for their warmth, humor, and
telling details about family and school life. They have an earthy,
strong sense of place (apparently rural eastern Ontario, where the
author has lived since 1988).

The stories are full of powerful images: “and the magazine ... shrank
and shrank in her mind’s eye until it was nothing but a bright, hot
ember.” Though I liked every one of the stories, “Tashkent” was my
favorite because of the moving handling of death, illness, friendship,
and bullies. Some stories, like “The Hope Bakery” and “The
Clearing” have magical elements; most of the others are realistic. I
still laugh thinking about “Save the Moon for Kerdy Dickus,” a
believable, hilarious tale that sports marvelous variations in sentence
structure and length. For history buffs, there’s the last entry,
“Star-taker,” which is based on a true account of a boy “famous
and forgotten” for his 1867 discovery.

This valuable, hard-to-put-down book won the 1993 Governor General’s
Award for children’s literature. Highly recommended.