Eighth-grader Leon Noside Harris is in the “gifted pool” at school. None of the students like their overbearing teacher, Mrs. Smollet; she seems to want to run the school and their lives, but thinks the gifted will be enriched by doing nonstop crossword puzzles. When given the chance to make an instructional short feature for younger students in Mr. Streich’s Advanced Studies class, Leon decides to make a sex-ed documentary, letting kids know that thinking about sex is normal. Mrs. Smollet finds out and gets Leon suspended for “morals violations.” His friends leak the story to the other students, and Leon becomes a folk hero with great results. In his debut, Selzer manages to capture the voice of a smarter-than-average young teen as he humorously observes his parents, the teachers and his classmates. Pervasive strong language and subject matter bump up the target audience, but there’s definite appeal in the “kid-wins-over-teacher” plot and some real laughs along the way to victory. (Fiction. 13-15)
Pub Date: Feb. 13, 2007
ISBN: 0-385-73369-0
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2007
Namioka (Den of the White Fox, 1997, etc.) offers readers a glimpse of the ritual of foot-binding, and a surprising heroine whose life is determined by her rejection of that ritual. Ailin is spirited—her family thinks uncontrollable—even at age five, in her family’s compound in China in 1911, she doesn’t want to have her feet bound, especially after Second Sister shows Ailin her own bound feet and tells her how much it hurts. Ailin can see already how bound feet will restrict her movements, and prevent her from running and playing. Her father takes the revolutionary step of permitting her to leave her feet alone, even though the family of Ailin’s betrothed then breaks off the engagement. Ailin goes to the missionary school and learns English; when her father dies and her uncle cuts off funds for tuition, she leaves her family to become a nanny for an American missionary couple’s children. She learns all the daily household chores that were done by servants in her own home, and finds herself, painfully, cut off from her own culture and separate from the Americans. At 16, she decides to go with the missionaries when they return to San Francisco, where she meets and marries another Chinese immigrant who starts his own restaurant. The metaphor of things bound and unbound is a ribbon winding through this vivid narrative; the story moves swiftly, while Ailin is a brave and engaging heroine whose difficult choices reflect her time and her gender. (Fiction. 9-14)
Pub Date: May 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-385-32666-1
Page Count: 154
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 1999
Masquerading as a man, a young woman sets out to find her friend’s killer in New York and London at the turn of the century; disguise proves to be simultaneously liberating and imprisoning in Lewin’s big-canvas historical novel. No one is who she or he seems to be, not the gender-bending heroine Jackie who spends most of her life as Jack so she can play baseball; not her best friend, Nance, a black performer who “passes” as white, and who dies of a stab wound in the opening pages. Cleverly structured and meticulously detailed so that every piece of information neatly clicks into the jigsaw-puzzle ending, the novel runs on two tracks. One chronicles Jackie’s past history starting with her grandmother (whose incredible life both mirrors and influences her granddaughter’s); the other details her current adventures as the avenger of her best friend, along with a surprise unveiling of her father’s murderer. After a vivid trip through 19th-century America, the novel concludes in and around the music halls of London, where Jackie’s past and present converge. The derring-do climax fails to ignite, for this is a book in which the journey surpasses the destination, but overall Lewin produces a grand adventure that readers won’t soon forget. (Fiction. 12-14)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-8050-6225-4
Page Count: 520
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: May 30, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1999
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