SOURCE: A review of Monkey Island, in Horn Book Magazine, Vol. LXVII, No. 5, September-October 1991, pp. 596-97.

In the following review, Fader praises Fox's deft handling of serious social issues in Monkey Island.

[In Monkey Island], eleven-year-old Clay Garrity awakens in the welfare hotel where he and his pregnant mother have lived for the last month to find his mother gone. His search for her leads him to a nearby park, where he becomes part of an encampment of homeless people, but a bout with pneumonia brings Clay's situation to the attention of the social service agencies, which place him with a foster family while they continue the quest for his absent mother. Although he is well cared for in the foster home, Clay especially misses the two homeless men who had become his surrogate family and who had helped him survive. He repeatedly visits the park until he...