Out of the nuclear fallout springs a moving tale of love and loss.
The citizens of the town of Pripyat, Ukraine, have always been assured that “an accident at a nuclear power station was a statistical impossibility.”
So when the morning of April 26, 1986, dawns red, with “unearthly blue” smoke billowing into the air, life proceeds as normal. Fifth grade classmates and rivals Valentina Kaplan and Oksana Savchenko, however, are worried. Their fathers, night-shift plant workers at the Chernobyl power station, have not yet come home. Soon word gets out that reactor No. 4 has exploded, killing several workers and sending the rest en masse to the hospital, poisoned by the very air they breathe. Forced together by the sudden evacuation, the girls must overcome both their hatred of each other and the grief heaped upon them by the accident as they forge a new life in Leningrad with Valentina’s estranged grandmother, who harbors a dangerous secret. Blankman spins a stunningly complex tale out of simple words. By focusing her account on only the two young girls, Blankman situates the seemingly distant horror of the disaster in a firmly human context. Extensive research on historical events, names, cityscapes, and living situations enriches the story, which alternates perspective among Valentina, Oksana, and Rifka, Valentina’s grandmother. Rifka’s chapters take place during World War II, which initially deflects focus from the story somewhat, but they quickly find their place as the story’s heart as they introduce the blackbird, a symbol of eternal friendship. Ukrainian characters are assumed White; Valentina’s family is Jewish.
Out of the nuclear fallout springs a moving tale of love and loss. (Historical fiction. 9-12)Pub Date: March 10, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-3735-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Nov. 23, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
An absorbing adventure that wears its twin informational and character-development loads lightly.
A young Parisian joins the French Resistance in this Boys of Wartime series entry.
Motivated equally by patriotism, hatred for the occupying boches and a desire to win the esteem of his absent father, Michael joins a friend in distributing taunting leaflets. His involvement in Resistance activities soon escalates into helping captured British and American airmen make their way to Spain. At first he acts only as a courier of forged identity documents, but later he helps first to slip a Jewish neighbor’s child out of the city, then hides an ailing American fugitive in his family’s apartment before accompanying him south over the Pyrenees. Meanwhile, he serves as a witness to the anxieties and physical hardships of wartime life under the Nazis, while seeing friends, neighbors and his own older brother taken away and ultimately earning sufficient self-esteem to lose his dependence on his father’s regard. Calkoven’s characters are simplified types, but she crafts an action-oriented plot that is suspenseful without being explicitly violent and is also well stocked with carefully researched details. A timeline and multiple notes at the end provide quick overviews of the tale’s historical background and the war’s overall course.
An absorbing adventure that wears its twin informational and character-development loads lightly. (map, glossary, reading list) (Historical fiction. 10-12)Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-8037-3724-2
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2011
Jimmy has quite the story to tell. His happy life in Lake Charles, La., is suddenly disrupted by a violent storm, and he is...
Paley offers a first-person, present-tense account of a puppy’s journey through Hurricane Katrina, based on a true story.
Jimmy has quite the story to tell. His happy life in Lake Charles, La., is suddenly disrupted by a violent storm, and he is left alone and homeless. The fierce storm and Jimmy’s struggles to stay alive are described in unsparing detail. Jimmy barely escapes drowning and being eaten by a bobcat. Starving, he spots a nest of baby birds: “I lean over and snatch one. While the raft is rocking, I gobble it up. It’s so good, I grab a second bird without hesitating.” After being rescued from the flood waters, Jimmy describes the conditions he endures in an animal shelter before being adopted by a new family in New York. At first, Jimmy is not sure how he feels about his new life; his new “Dad” doesn’t seem to think much of him, and there are the small matters of a bully in the dog park and a new name, Hooper, to get used to. Adjustment brings contentment, and readers who have followed Jimmy/Hooper's odyssey will be satisfied with the ending.Pub Date: June 28, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-06-201103-9
Page Count: 144
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
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