by Sherry Garland ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 1, 1997
The usually understated Garland (Letters from the Mountain, 1996, etc.) resorts to melodrama throughout this tale of a girl's search for identity. With the death of her grandmother, Caroline Long, 13, finds herself in the middle of a power struggle between her no-good, often-absent father, Jackson, and her grandmother's twin sister, Aunt Oriona. Caroline entrusts herself to Jackson's care, only to be shipped off to a cousin's home without him. For most of her life, Caroline has tried to find out about her mother, who died in childbirth. Now cousin Mattie tells Caroline the truth—she is the illegitimate offspring of her father and a beautiful Indian woman who performed 14 years ago in Shawnee Sam's Wild West show. When Caroline overhears her father, Aunt Oriona, and Mattie plot her final custody (Aunt Oriona is paying Jackson off and Mattie wants a piece of the action), she runs off with Shawnee Sam's Wild West show, hoping to learn more about her mother. ``Disguised'' as an Indian, she soon understands how badly the Native Americans are being treated; she also locates her mother's father—her grandfather. Garland gives Caroline a ``shattered'' heart and the ``bitter gall of betrayal'' she needs to run off, then peppers her heroine's path with contrivances. The book is enlivened by the behind-the-scenes life of the Wild West show and some insights into what it was like to be a Native American in white society in the 1800s. (Fiction. 10-16)
Pub Date: May 1, 1997
ISBN: 0-15-200649-4
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 1997
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by Marina Budhos ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 1, 2006
Illegal immigrant sisters learn a lot about themselves when their family faces deportation in this compelling contemporary drama. Immigrants from Bangladesh, Nadira, her older sister Aisha and their parents live in New York City with expired visas. Fourteen-year-old Nadira describes herself as “the slow-wit second-born” who follows Aisha, the family star who’s on track for class valedictorian and a top-rate college. Everything changes when post-9/11 government crack-downs on Muslim immigrants push the family to seek asylum in Canada where they are turned away at the border and their father is arrested by U.S. immigration. The sisters return to New York living in constant fear of detection and trying to pretend everything is normal. As months pass, Aisha falls apart while Nadira uses her head in “a right way” to save her father and her family. Nadira’s need for acceptance by her family neatly parallels the family’s desire for acceptance in their adopted country. A perceptive peek into the lives of foreigners on the fringe. (endnote) (Fiction. 10-14)
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2006
ISBN: 1-4169-0351-8
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Ginee Seo/Atheneum
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2005
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by Patricia McCormick ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 8, 2012
Though it lacks references or suggestions for further reading, Arn's agonizing story is compelling enough that many readers...
A harrowing tale of survival in the Killing Fields.
The childhood of Arn Chorn-Pond has been captured for young readers before, in Michelle Lord and Shino Arihara's picture book, A Song for Cambodia (2008). McCormick, known for issue-oriented realism, offers a fictionalized retelling of Chorn-Pond's youth for older readers. McCormick's version begins when the Khmer Rouge marches into 11-year-old Arn's Cambodian neighborhood and forces everyone into the country. Arn doesn't understand what the Khmer Rouge stands for; he only knows that over the next several years he and the other children shrink away on a handful of rice a day, while the corpses of adults pile ever higher in the mango grove. Arn does what he must to survive—and, wherever possible, to protect a small pocket of children and adults around him. Arn's chilling history pulls no punches, trusting its readers to cope with the reality of children forced to participate in murder, torture, sexual exploitation and genocide. This gut-wrenching tale is marred only by the author's choice to use broken English for both dialogue and description. Chorn-Pond, in real life, has spoken eloquently (and fluently) on the influence he's gained by learning English; this prose diminishes both his struggle and his story.
Though it lacks references or suggestions for further reading, Arn's agonizing story is compelling enough that many readers will seek out the history themselves. (preface, author's note) (Historical fiction. 12-15)Pub Date: May 8, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-06-173093-1
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Balzer + Bray/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 20, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2012
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