The book opens in 1941, when Wheeze is a scruffy 13-year-old poling a skiff with her only real friend, a boy named Call. And when Caroline makes friendly overtures to Wheeze, it does not (to our relief) result in magical harmony forever after. The parents do their best to be fair, although they don't <(CONTINUED FROM PAGE 11) always succeed. Caroline can be a prig but she's also kindhearted. She isn't a villain, however, and this is not a stereotypic good sister/bad sister story. Without even trying, Caroline acquires everything Wheeze wants. Her sister, Caroline, is pretty and supremely talented, while Wheeze is a gawky girl of no apparent talent at all, unless you count her considerable skill as a crabber and oyster tonger off Rass Island in the Chesapeake Bay.
"Wheeze" Bradshaw is a twin - a second-best twin. Jacob Have I Loved, Katherine Patersons's sixth novel, centers on an ugly duckling of such endurance and rough charm that readers should take to her immediately. Both books won several kinds of prizes each, but my own private prize goes to Gilly - always a foster child, never a daughter. The two mavericks of Bridge to Terabithia and the incorrigible title character of The Great Gilly Hopkins are spunky, independent, and sharply observed. IN THE YEARS SINCE turning from her earlier, Japan-based novels (mostly notably the award-winning The Master Puppeteer), Katherine Paterson has created a handful of engagingly rakish young Americans. By Anne Tyler Anne Tyler's most recent novel is Morgan's Passing November 9, 1980
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