Professional storyteller McGill (Molly Bannaky, 1999) has written a first novel that is enjoyable and compelling, though it shows some seams. Miles is a young slave being trained as a servant in the great house, but when he is caught looking at a book, he is sent to the breaking grounds. There he meets Elijah, who teaches him to read and write, and to set his mind towards freedom. He learns how to use field talk as a mask to show the breakers and the masters the slave they want to see, and then returns to the plantation. There he awaits word from Elijah to start the journey that he will embark upon toward freedom. McGill's narrative moves smoothly and lyrically, with the sweeping tones of an oral story. Unfortunately, the characters, while convincing, are generally one-dimensional, and historical details sometimes seem forced. For instance, Miles, though violently startled the first time he hears a steam train, boards his first train without notice. These and other slight inconsistencies mar the cohesiveness of the novel; yet it is still a good and well-told story that will have wide appeal and may educate young readers about aspects of slavery, like hammer rings and the breaking grounds. This is promising work. (Fiction. 9-13)
Pub Date: April 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-395-97938-2
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2000
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
The poem/novel ends with only a trace of hope; there are no pat endings, but a glimpse of beauty wrought from brutal reality.
Billie Jo tells of her life in Oklahoma during the Dust Bowl: Her mother dies after a gruesome accident caused by her father's leaving a bucket of kerosene near the stove; Billie Jo is partially responsible—fully responsible in the eyes of the community—and sustains injuries that seem to bring to a halt her dreams of playing the piano.
Finding a way through her grief is not made easier by her taciturn father, who went on a drinking binge while Billie Joe's mother, not yet dead, begged for water. Told in free-verse poetry of dated entries that span the winter of 1934 to the winter of 1935, this is an unremittingly bleak portrait of one corner of Depression-era life. In Billie Jo, the only character who comes to life, Hesse (The Music of Dolphins, 1996, etc.) presents a hale and determined heroine who confronts unrelenting misery and begins to transcend it.
The poem/novel ends with only a trace of hope; there are no pat endings, but a glimpse of beauty wrought from brutal reality. (Fiction. 9-12)Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1997
ISBN: 978-0-590-36080-7
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1997
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