Darrah goes from too-bad to too-good way too fast to be believable or especially satisfying.
Darrah, angry that her mother’s preoccupation with her younger brother’s out-of-control epilepsy has caused her to miss an important audition, pulls the fire alarm in the hospital and then must face the consequences.
After pulling the alarm, while escaping down the stairs, Darrah accidentally knocks over elderly Mrs. Johnson, who breaks her leg. The consequences in the Canadian justice system are for her to face all the involved parties in a Restorative Justice circle; they then agree on an appropriate punishment. Darrah suffers from a bad attitude at the outset, showing little guilt and, initially, a lack of empathy. She’s sentenced to provide in-home assistance to Mrs. Johnson, a wise, nearly blind lady who’s determined to straighten the teen out, partly with cooking lessons that immediately strike a chord with Darrah. She quickly realizes that few know of Mrs. Johnson’s eyesight problems and worries over whether to protect her secret. Darrah makes a remarkably rapid turnaround in attitude, becoming devoted to her slightly cranky mentor and also getting swept up in a new friendship with the woman’s agreeable grandson. In addition to relying on the all-too-familiar transformation-under-tutelage-of-wise-elder trope, Walsh takes on more issues than she can effectively handle and never quite does justice to any of them, in spite of a few likable-enough characters.
Darrah goes from too-bad to too-good way too fast to be believable or especially satisfying. (Fiction. 11-14)Pub Date: Sept. 25, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-55380-259-4
Page Count: 200
Publisher: Ronsdale Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 13, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2013
Well-educated American boys from privileged families have abundant options for college and career. For Chiko, their Burmese counterpart, there are no good choices. There is never enough to eat, and his family lives in constant fear of the military regime that has imprisoned Chiko’s physician father. Soon Chiko is commandeered by the army, trained to hunt down members of the Karenni ethnic minority. Tai, another “recruit,” uses his streetwise survival skills to help them both survive. Meanwhile, Tu Reh, a Karenni youth whose village was torched by the Burmese Army, has been chosen for his first military mission in his people’s resistance movement. How the boys meet and what comes of it is the crux of this multi-voiced novel. While Perkins doesn’t sugarcoat her subject—coming of age in a brutal, fascistic society—this is a gentle story with a lot of heart, suitable for younger readers than the subject matter might suggest. It answers the question, “What is it like to be a child soldier?” clearly, but with hope. (author’s note, historical note) (Fiction. 11-14)
Pub Date: July 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-58089-328-2
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Charlesbridge
Review Posted Online: May 31, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2010
Stands out neither as a folk-tale retelling, a coming-of-age story, nor a Holocaust novel.
A Holocaust tale with a thin “Hansel and Gretel” veneer from the author of The Devil’s Arithmetic (1988).
Chaim and Gittel, 14-year-old twins, live with their parents in the Lodz ghetto, forced from their comfortable country home by the Nazis. The siblings are close, sharing a sign-based twin language; Chaim stutters and communicates primarily with his sister. Though slowly starving, they make the best of things with their beloved parents, although it’s more difficult once they must share their tiny flat with an unpleasant interfaith couple and their Mischling (half-Jewish) children. When the family hears of their impending “wedding invitation”—the ghetto idiom for a forthcoming order for transport—they plan a dangerous escape. Their journey is difficult, and one by one, the adults vanish. Ultimately the children end up in a fictional child labor camp, making ammunition for the German war effort. Their story effectively evokes the dehumanizing nature of unremitting silence. Nevertheless, the dense, distancing narrative (told in a third-person contemporaneous narration focused through Chaim with interspersed snippets from Gittel’s several-decades-later perspective) has several consistency problems, mostly regarding the relative religiosity of this nominally secular family. One theme seems to be frustration with those who didn’t fight back against overwhelming odds, which makes for a confusing judgment on the suffering child protagonists.
Stands out neither as a folk-tale retelling, a coming-of-age story, nor a Holocaust novel. (author’s note) (Historical fiction. 12-14)Pub Date: March 6, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-399-25778-0
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Philomel
Review Posted Online: Dec. 20, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2018
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