A wealthy blended family of white siblings purposely misses their connecting flight as a way of protesting their parents’ divorce in this debut by screenwriters Andelson and Meyer.
After 10-year-old Poppy lets slip to her older half brother and half sister, Amos and Flynn, that she overheard their parents are planning to divorce, the angry trio decides to ditch meeting their parents in Bora Bora and get off the plane in LA. Luckily, Flynn’s rich, Indian-American summer-camp crush, Neel Khan, lives nearby and can rescue them. So they dump their cellphones and embark on a three-day adventure that includes both a visit to Disneyland and the loss of Flynn’s virginity. The sibs’ complicated past is relayed in flashbacks: Flynn’s dad and Amos’ mom had an affair, divorced their spouses, married each other, and had Poppy. Stepsiblings Flynn and Amos, only a year apart, dote on Poppy and are beginning to have romantic feelings for each other. But unfortunately, their voices are so indistinguishable that it’s often difficult to decipher whose parent did what and who is crushing on whom. And the relentlessly clichéd dialogue (“ ‘What’s your problem, Amos?’ I fire back, trying not to let my voice crack. / ‘I don’t have a problem’ / ‘Right.’ / ‘You know what? I take it back. I do have a problem,’ he says. And then, outrageously: 'You. You’re my problem, Flynn’ ”) doesn’t help much in individuating them.
Readers looking for a guilty-pleasure 1-percent read can do better than this Gossip Girl retread. (Fiction. 12-15)Pub Date: Jan. 30, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5247-6487-6
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 26, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2017
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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 21, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2012
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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 20, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2011
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