Nail-biting yet endearing.
Dee and Eddie’s father has been gone for six weeks. The money is running out. And child protective services has questions.
Whether it is the unexpected drive from their home in Alberta, Canada, to Arizona or the ice cream run that turns into a three-day road trip, 16-year-old Dee is accustomed to her father’s impulsivity. But this is the longest their father has left her and her 7-year-old brother, Eddie, alone. When a social worker begins asking questions, Dee knows it is time to go, but with an 18-year-old Toyota, less than $500, and passports that are set to expire soon, options are limited. Dee points their ancient car north in hopes of finding a way across the border to the safety of her aunt and uncle. But with a little brother who lives for routine and frequently shuts down entirely when stressed, Dee is overwhelmed. Once they get on the road, this is a beautiful, if heart-wrenching story of two children left adrift due to the death of their mother and their father’s mental illness. Whether it is a side trip to the Grand Canyon or mistaking someone’s front yard for a camping spot, the siblings’ humor and loyalty are real. The exaggerated accents of a kindly Eastern European immigrant couple and a too-perfect ending are the story’s only missteps.
Nail-biting yet endearing. (Fiction. 10-14)Pub Date: Aug. 29, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-4598-1544-5
Page Count: 216
Publisher: Orca
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2017
Despite the stale fat-to-curvy pattern, compelling world building with a Southern European, pseudo-Christian feel,...
Adventure drags our heroine all over the map of fantasyland while giving her the opportunity to use her smarts.
Elisa—Princess Lucero-Elisa de Riqueza of Orovalle—has been chosen for Service since the day she was born, when a beam of holy light put a Godstone in her navel. She's a devout reader of holy books and is well-versed in the military strategy text Belleza Guerra, but she has been kept in ignorance of world affairs. With no warning, this fat, self-loathing princess is married off to a distant king and is embroiled in political and spiritual intrigue. War is coming, and perhaps only Elisa's Godstone—and knowledge from the Belleza Guerra—can save them. Elisa uses her untried strategic knowledge to always-good effect. With a character so smart that she doesn't have much to learn, body size is stereotypically substituted for character development. Elisa’s "mountainous" body shrivels away when she spends a month on forced march eating rat, and thus she is a better person. Still, it's wonderfully refreshing to see a heroine using her brain to win a war rather than strapping on a sword and charging into battle.
Despite the stale fat-to-curvy pattern, compelling world building with a Southern European, pseudo-Christian feel, reminiscent of Naomi Kritzer's Fires of the Faithful (2002), keeps this entry fresh. (Fantasy. 12-14)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-06-202648-4
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Greenwillow Books
Review Posted Online: July 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2011
It’s the haunting details of those around Kai that readers will remember.
Kai’s life is upended when his coastal village is devastated in Japan’s 2011 earthquake and tsunami in this verse novel from an author who experienced them firsthand.
With his single mother, her parents, and his friend Ryu among the thousands missing or dead, biracial Kai, 17, is dazed and disoriented. His friend Shin’s supportive, but his intact family reminds Kai, whose American dad has been out of touch for years, of his loss. Kai’s isolation is amplified by his uncertain cultural status. Playing soccer and his growing friendship with shy Keiko barely lessen his despair. Then he’s invited to join a group of Japanese teens traveling to New York to meet others who as teenagers lost parents in the 9/11 attacks a decade earlier. Though at first reluctant, Kai agrees to go and, in the process, begins to imagine a future. Like graphic novels, today’s spare novels in verse (the subgenre concerning disasters especially) are significantly shaped by what’s left out. Lacking art’s visceral power to grab attention, verse novels may—as here—feel sparsely plotted with underdeveloped characters portrayed from a distance in elegiac monotone. Kai’s a generic figure, a coat hanger for the disaster’s main event, his victories mostly unearned; in striking contrast, his rural Japanese community and how they endure catastrophe and overwhelming losses—what they do and don’t do for one another, comforts they miss, kindnesses they value—spring to life.
It’s the haunting details of those around Kai that readers will remember. (author preface, afterword) (Verse fiction. 12-14)Pub Date: Jan. 12, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-553-53474-0
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Sept. 15, 2015
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