by Amrita Das ; illustrated by Amrita Das ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 15, 2014
“We’re all in this together,” Das writes, “lost, but not quite.” Older, Western children and teens may well feel they’ve...
Das debuts with illustrations done in a distinctive Indian style paired to a brief meditative text—part memoir, part artist’s statement, part rumination—on women’s personal journeys.
Sparked by a workshop assignment, the artist recalls her own childhood and, on a certain train trip, encounters with two young women. One travels alone to find work; the other, disabled but composed in the face of jeers, sells fruit from a cart. Centered on each spread (and sometimes losing a little in the gutters), the art, done in the Mithila folk tradition, offers large, often multiple scenes of, mostly, women in flat-perspective rural or urban settings, delineated in wavy lines and contrasting patterns. Though strongly stylized, the activities in which these figures are engaged are easy to identify, and they range from traditional farm or domestic work to riding a scooter, painting, using a computer keyboard or just sitting in quiet thought. “A girl’s life is hard,” Das reflects. “If you dream for a moment, you’re asked why you’re twiddling your thumbs.…No one lets you forget that you’re born a girl, not a boy.” Still, she takes heart from the two chance-met women and ends with: “I want to be brave, and different.”
“We’re all in this together,” Das writes, “lost, but not quite.” Older, Western children and teens may well feel they’ve found an unexpected comrade. (afterword on the art) (Picture book. 11-16)Pub Date: April 15, 2014
ISBN: 978-93-83145-02-7
Page Count: 28
Publisher: Tara Publishing
Review Posted Online: Jan. 14, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2014
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edited by Peter Brosius & Elissa Adams ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 1, 2011
Groups considering mounting productions that go beyond the popular musicals may want to consider looking at this uneven but...
Newly created plays for young people are not published very often, so this collection merits some attention.
The four dramas, commissioned by the well-respected Minneapolis Children’s Theater Company, are about growing up in ethnically diverse communities, but the plays cover different sets of problems for their young protagonists. Esperanza Rising, loosely adapted from the novel by Pam Muñoz Ryan, is set during the Depression, when Mexican immigrants competed with Okies for agricultural jobs in California. Esperanza changes from a pampered rich girl into a hard worker. The others are very contemporary. In Average Family, a reality-TV contest brings the wealthy Minneapolis Roubidoux family back to a Native American lifestyle they have never known. Also set in Minneapolis, the strongest play (at least on the page), Snapshot Silhouette, features a resilient Somali refugee, Najma, who finds both her voice and a new friend when she moves in with a well-meaning African American mother and her disaffected daughter; they are struggling as a family after the murder of an older daughter. Sasha, an isolated child of a Russian immigrant, finally gets to know her neighbors when she goes looking for a pen to write a research paper on the eponymous Brooklyn Bridge, the most artificial selection.
Groups considering mounting productions that go beyond the popular musicals may want to consider looking at this uneven but thought-provoking anthology. (Drama. 11-14)Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-8166-7313-1
Page Count: 296
Publisher: Univ. of Minnesota
Review Posted Online: Aug. 23, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2011
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by Sherryl Clark ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 1, 2011
A stronger-than-she-realizes heroine uses her disconcerting telepathic gifts to help others and heal herself in this...
After moving to a rural Australian town, Sasha’s unwelcome premonitions lead her to solve a string of art thefts while tackling her own issues.
Ever since her mum left, Sasha’s “life has turned into a huge, weird disaster area.” The sad, anxious Sasha knows her dad’s trying hard to hold the family together. When he accepts a police job in Manna Creek to “make a new life,” Sasha decides she’ll give “moving to the back of nowhere” a chance, just to make him happy. Unimpressed with the drab town, the bedraggled house behind the police station and the hostile locals who resent the new cop’s kids, Sasha and younger brother Nicky explore with their new pet police dog, King. Sasha’s freaked out when she finds that she and King can communicate telepathically and even more upset when she starts dreaming about local people, past and present, who are about to die. Is there something wrong with her? Should she tell her father or repress everything? In an authentic first-person voice, Sasha fumes at her missing mum, reacts negatively to Manna Creek, supports her father and brother and conveys her fears about her telepathic powers as she leads the tense, fast-moving plot to resolution.
A stronger-than-she-realizes heroine uses her disconcerting telepathic gifts to help others and heal herself in this satisfying adventure. (Paranormal adventure. 11-14)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-61067-063-0
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Kane Miller
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2011
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