It’s delightful to see a female snowboarder as narrator, and readers who can get past the book’s unevenness will find...
A teen snowboarder reconnects with her estranged father, an ardent environmentalist.
As the book opens, Charlotte seems to have given up on snowboarding as she describes giving away all her expensive gear, but she's soon back at it (and bemoaning the absence of equipment). Charlotte and her mother, both white, have moved from the Rockies to the Cascades due to her mother’s layoff. The intent is to reconnect Charlotte with her father, Larry, who bears the titular scar and has taken a job at the local ski resort. The alcoholism that separated her parents is no longer an issue, and as Charlotte and Larry share backcountry adventures, the environmental passions Larry currently holds become more apparent. The book’s environmental slant grows through a new friendship with Rose, whose success at school shares equal prominence with her Mexican-American heritage. Her father runs an apple orchard and is almost as fierce as Larry about preserving the pristine wilderness of the Cascades. Spagna incorporates discussion of the environmental impact development fairly smoothly, but the same cannot be said for her plotting. Following her renewed interest in boarding, Charlotte again seems to be abandoning the sport just as she cements a national ranking.
It’s delightful to see a female snowboarder as narrator, and readers who can get past the book’s unevenness will find distinctive characters and an underrepresented subject . (Fiction. 12-16)Pub Date: Feb. 14, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-937226-66-4
Page Count: 200
Publisher: Torrey House Press
Review Posted Online: Nov. 1, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2016
Those preparing to “slay the sucktastic beast known as high school” will particularly appreciate this spirited read.
In the sequel to Insignificant Events in the Life of a Cactus (2017), Aven Green confronts her biggest challenge yet: surviving high school without arms.
Fourteen-year-old Aven has just settled into life at Stagecoach Pass with her adoptive parents when everything changes again. She’s entering high school, which means that 2,300 new kids will stare at her missing arms—and her feet, which do almost everything hands can (except, alas, air quotes). Aven resolves to be “blasé” and field her classmates’ pranks with aplomb, but a humiliating betrayal shakes her self-confidence. Even her friendships feel unsteady. Her friend Connor’s moved away and made a new friend who, like him, has Tourette’s syndrome: a girl. And is Lando, her friend Zion’s popular older brother, being sweet to Aven out of pity—or something more? Bowling keenly depicts the universal awkwardness of adolescence and the particular self-consciousness of navigating a disability. Aven’s “armless-girl problems” realistically grow thornier in this outing, touching on such tough topics as death and aging, but warm, quirky secondary characters lend support. A few preachy epiphanies notwithstanding, Aven’s honest, witty voice shines—whether out-of-reach vending-machine snacks are “taunting” her or she’s nursing heartaches. A subplot exploring Aven’s curiosity about her biological father resolves with a touching twist. Most characters, including Aven, appear white; Zion and Lando are black.
Those preparing to “slay the sucktastic beast known as high school” will particularly appreciate this spirited read. (Fiction. 12-14)Pub Date: Sept. 17, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4549-3329-8
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Sterling
Review Posted Online: June 9, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2019
Chilling, difficult, and definitely not for readers without a solid understanding of the Holocaust despite the relatively...
A young boy grows up in Adolf Hitler’s mountain home in Austria.
Seven-year-old Pierrot Fischer and his frail French mother live in Paris. His German father, a bitter ex-soldier, returned to Germany and died there. Pierrot’s best friend is Anshel Bronstein, a deaf Jewish boy. After his mother dies, he lives in an orphanage, until his aunt Beatrix sends for him to join her at the Berghof mountain retreat in Austria, where she is housekeeper for Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun. It is here that he becomes ever more enthralled with Hitler and grows up, proudly wearing the uniform of the Hitler Youth, treating others with great disdain, basking in his self-importance, and then committing a terrible act of betrayal against his aunt. He witnesses vicious acts against Jews, and he hears firsthand of plans for extermination camps. Yet at war’s end he maintains that he was only a child and didn’t really understand. An epilogue has him returning to Paris, where he finds Anshel and begins a kind of catharsis. Boyne includes real Nazi leaders and historical details in his relentless depiction of Pierrot’s inevitable corruption and self-delusion. As with The Boy in the Striped Pajamas (2006), readers both need to know what Pierrot disingenuously doesn’t and are expected to accept his extreme naiveté, his total lack of awareness and comprehension in spite of what is right in front of him.
Chilling, difficult, and definitely not for readers without a solid understanding of the Holocaust despite the relatively simple reading level. (Historical fiction. 12-14)Pub Date: June 7, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-62779-030-7
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: March 29, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2016
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