It ought to be the best day of 14-year-old Cassie’s life—the day of her violin solo with the Chicago Youth Symphony Orchestra—but her always-angry dad is more jittery than usual. When her estranged grandfather appears, it’s the last straw for her dad. Not long after the concert, he explodes, hurling her cat across the room and shattering her violin. Cassie flees to Pretoria in search of her grandfather but instead finds herself alone and overwhelmed in a strange city. Kind strangers, churches and teen shelters help her survive, but she’s not cut out for the dangers and privations of homelessness. Returning home, Cassie joins her family on the long, hard slog toward repairing their lives. Cassie’s love for the violin provides much-needed flavor for what would otherwise be a simple problem novel about emotional abuse and helpless teens. Too quickly, therapy, truth telling and interfamily trust offer the magic pill to cure PTSD. Still, this poignant story of multigenerational abuse is a compelling read. (Fiction. 11-13)
Pub Date: Sept. 28, 2009
ISBN: 978-1-934813-08-9
Page Count: 262
Publisher: 4N
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2009
If it were a Golden Age comic, this tale of ridiculous science, space dogs and humanoid aliens with flashlights in their hands might not be bad. Alas... Number Four is a fugitive from the planet Lorien, which is sloppily described as both "hundreds of lightyears away" and "billions of miles away." Along with eight other children and their caretakers, Number Four escaped from the Mogadorian invasion of Lorien ten years ago. Now the nine children are scattered on Earth, hiding. Luckily and fairly nonsensically, the planet's Elders cast a charm on them so they could only be killed in numerical order, but children one through three are dead, and Number Four is next. Too bad he's finally gained a friend and a girlfriend and doesn't want to run. At least his newly developing alien powers means there will be screen-ready combat and explosions. Perhaps most idiotic, "author" Pittacus Lore is a character in this fiction—but the first-person narrator is someone else entirely. Maybe this is a natural extension of lightly hidden actual author James Frey's drive to fictionalize his life, but literature it ain't. (Science fiction. 11-13)
Pub Date: Aug. 17, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-06-196955-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2010
Paulsen recalls personal experiences that he incorporated into Hatchet (1987) and its three sequels, from savage attacks by moose and mosquitoes to watching helplessly as a heart-attack victim dies. As usual, his real adventures are every bit as vivid and hair-raising as those in his fiction, and he relates them with relish—discoursing on “The Fine Art of Wilderness Nutrition,” for instance: “Something that you would never consider eating, something completely repulsive and ugly and disgusting, something so gross it would make you vomit just looking at it, becomes absolutely delicious if you’re starving.” Specific examples follow, to prove that he knows whereof he writes. The author adds incidents from his Iditarod races, describes how he made, then learned to hunt with, bow and arrow, then closes with methods of cooking outdoors sans pots or pans. It’s a patchwork, but an entertaining one, and as likely to win him new fans as to answer questions from his old ones. (Autobiography. 10-13)
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-385-32650-5
Page Count: 150
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2000
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