An inspiring story of teenage resilience and how trauma need not be an insurmountable obstacle.
After her brother’s sudden death, a teen girl struggles to find a future for herself beyond her loss and trauma in Yamashiro’s debut YA novel.
“Two months ago, my brother, Jake, died,” confides Anela Lee, a 15-year-old of Italian and Polynesian descent whose already difficult and impoverished family life all but disintegrates in the wake of the tragedy. Before Jake’s death, Anela’s parents ignored her, putting their focus solely on her brother’s high school football career. Previously an exceptional student, Anela now isolates herself from friends and lets her grades swiftly decline. But Miss DeGracia, her social studies teacher, refuses to give up on her, and during a school trip to the State House she introduces Anela to the firebrand senator Nastasia Yen Strasberg. Strasberg offers the girl a job and a mentor, sharing stories of youthful hardship not unlike Anela’s own suffered by men who would become American presidents. These hard-luck tales of historical figures (in combination with the lessons in self-confidence that Jake instilled in her) guide Anela toward reforging relationships with lost friends and her contrite mother—and, ultimately, to an essay contest that offers a pathway to Harvard College. Yamashiro has long studied the childhood traumas of American presidents and relates many of these stories here through the character of Senator Strasberg in a seamless, organic manner, offering informative parallels to Anela’s journey. Equally impressive is the Boston-based community the book depicts, as many of Anela’s neighbors, peers, and mentors are revealed to also be silently carrying their own burdens. (These problems are presented as being equally relevant, even if some characters are more socially or financially privileged than the protagonist.) The story never portrays poverty in an exploitative way or as a moral failing. Instead, adversity is presented as something that, if not surrendered to, can shape an individual—an important lesson for readers of any age.
An inspiring story of teenage resilience and how trauma need not be an insurmountable obstacle.Pub Date: May 10, 2024
ISBN: 9798888242223
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Koehler Books
Review Posted Online: June 18, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
PROFILES
An ode to the children of migrants who have been taken away.
A Mexican American boy takes on heavy responsibilities when his family is torn apart.
Mateo’s life is turned upside down the day U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents show up unsuccessfully seeking his Pa at his New York City bodega. The Garcias live in fear until the day both parents are picked up; his Pa is taken to jail and his Ma to a detention center. The adults around Mateo offer support to him and his 7-year-old sister, Sophie, however, he knows he is now responsible for caring for her and the bodega as well as trying to survive junior year—that is, if he wants to fulfill his dream to enter the drama program at the Tisch School of the Arts and become an actor. Mateo’s relationships with his friends Kimmie and Adam (a potential love interest) also suffer repercussions as he keeps his situation a secret. Kimmie is half Korean (her other half is unspecified) and Adam is Italian American; Mateo feels disconnected from them, less American, and with worries they can’t understand. He talks himself out of choosing a safer course of action, a decision that deepens the story. Mateo’s self-awareness and inner monologue at times make him seem older than 16, and, with significant turmoil in the main plot, some side elements feel underdeveloped. Aleman’s narrative joins the ranks of heart-wrenching stories of migrant families who have been separated.
An ode to the children of migrants who have been taken away. (Fiction. 14-18)Pub Date: May 4, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-7595-5605-8
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 22, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A prototypical survival story: after an airplane crash, a 13-year-old city boy spends two months alone in the Canadian wilderness. In transit between his divorcing parents, Brian is the plane's only passenger. After casually showing him how to steer, the pilot has a heart attack and dies. In a breathtaking sequence, Brian maneuvers the plane for hours while he tries to think what to do, at last crashing as gently and levelly as he can manage into a lake. The plane sinks; all he has left is a hatchet, attached to his belt. His injuries prove painful but not fundamental. In time, he builds a shelter, experiments with berries, finds turtle eggs, starts a fire, makes a bow and arrow to catch fish and birds, and makes peace with the larger wildlife. He also battles despair and emerges more patient, prepared to learn from his mistakes—when a rogue moose attacks him and a fierce storm reminds him of his mortality, he's prepared to make repairs with philosophical persistence. His mixed feelings surprise him when the plane finally surfaces so that he can retrieve the survival pack; and then he's rescued. Plausible, taut, this is a spellbinding account. Paulsen's staccato, repetitive style conveys Brian's stress; his combination of third-person narrative with Brian's interior monologue pulls the reader into the story. Brian's angst over a terrible secret—he's seen his mother with another man—is undeveloped and doesn't contribute much, except as one item from his previous life that he sees in better perspective, as a result of his experience. High interest, not hard to read. A winner.
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1987
ISBN: 1416925082
Page Count: -
Publisher: Bradbury
Review Posted Online: Oct. 18, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1987
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