Reviews

Binny for Short by Hilary McKay

em_holborn's review against another edition

Read this for my class on children's lit. I loved this book!! It was so cute and the younger characters are written so realistically.

katiegrrrl's review against another edition

4.0

Binny has lost her father and her dog in a short span of time, it feels safer to focus on her lost dog and blaming her Aunty Violet. When Aunty Violet dies she leaves Binny and her family a small home in a sea town where they finally start to feel settled. Binny while still searching for her dog meets her enemy, in the house next door.

I read this with my ten year old daughter who was so sad when ended.

erine's review against another edition

5.0

So incredibly delightful. The beginning reminded me of Sense and Sensibility (family with three kids loses the father and ends up in an out-of-the-way cottage). The dual layer story added an ominous, semi-spooky tone that paid out big for me in the end (in a positive way). The moods in the story were almost their own characters, the descriptions were eloquent and fitting. I loved this.

Spoiler

And there was a perfectly happy ending.

"Yes, but stories are important. My father said they were. He said sometimes stories can save your life."

sandraisbooked's review against another edition

4.0

I loved Binny. She's brave, hopeful, and strong. Plagued by three family deaths and she still sees light and happiness in adventures and story telling. She deals with trauma and loss as does the rest of her family and they really find themselves in the inherited house they move into. A great well rounded character and so are her family members - Clem, James, and her mother - and the neighbors as well as other secondary characters. Friendship comes a long way. Everything is so vivid and I would have loved picking this book up when I was a kid.

bookwormbev17's review

4.0

Splendid! Wanted to spend more time with lovely Binny and her little family. The seaside location was perfectly portrayed and I felt I was actually there. Satisfying feelgood book.

tashrow's review against another edition

5.0

Binny’s life had been perfect but now she lost two of the most important things she ever had. First, her father died, taking his stories along with him. Then, because money became an issue, Binny’s dog had to be given away. Her dog was taken by her mean Aunty Violet, who never told anyone where Max had been sent. So when Binny found herself alone in a car with her Aunt, she told her exactly what she thought. Aunty Violet died soon after that conversation and left Binny and her family her old cottage by the sea, a tiny house but one of their very own. Now Binny finds herself in an idyllic seaside town, meeting great new friends and even better enemies, but still missing Max. Binny though is not a girl to easily give up, so she sets about planning to find her dog, no matter what.

I am such a fan of McKay and her writing. She has a natural flow both in her narrative and in the very real voices that all of her characters use with one another. Additionally, her characters are all flawed and realistically drawn which adds greatly to the veracity of her books. In the end, her books are filled with human beings who live in messy ways through their messy lives, beautifully.

Each member of Binny’s family is worthy of their own novel. Her older sister is glamorous and musical, yet works incredibly hard to afford the necessary lessons to be a musician. She is also as much a parent as their lovely but scattered mother. It is James though, her little brother, who completely steals the book. As he wears a wetsuit that he found in the trash every day that is pink and green, he has to prove that he’s a boy often, which of course means undressing in public. He is also growing poison lettuce in his window box from stolen seeds that just happened to find their way into his pocket. In other words, he’s a delight.

Strong characters and splendid writing result in a virtuoso start to a new series that will have McKay fans cheering for more. Appropriate for ages 9-12.

glyptodonsneeze's review against another edition

5.0

I can't believe it took me this long to read Binny for Short. I got it on the drop date, started it, set it down to savor, and waited over a year. The thing that really sparked my reading it is that the sequel's coming out this summer. Binny isn't Hilary McKay's strongest novel, but that's like saying that North America isn't God's strongest continent. It's amazing. McKay really rocks her minimalist approach to language here which is grand, but I do love it when she's effusive. The plot is that Binny's father died insolvent, and Binny had to give up her dog and is still grieving it, but then her terrible old great aunt who was instrumental in getting rid of the dog dies and leaves Binny her crumbling English seaside semi-detached house. Let's pause here to appreciate Hilary McKay's appreciation of the seaside, as other British authors, despite never being more than two hours from the sea, tend to forget they're on a big island. So Binny is a local in this seaside holiday town and the whole book is intercut with scenes from a harrowing afternoon trying to pull a fishing net off some rocks with her best enemy from next door.

http://surfeitofbooks.blogspot.com/2015/03/girl-books.html

ejderwood's review against another edition

3.0

Not quite as good as the Casson family books, but really lovely in a different sort of way. Perhaps a little weightier in tone.