The connection between going to work and growing up are explored in this excellent collection from Mazer (Going Where I'm Coming From, 1995, etc.). Fifteen stories explore what it's like to be young and employed, whether slinging hash in some fast-food joint, salmon-fishing, or picking peppers with a gang of illegal Mexican immigrants. Some stories are humorous, some are serious, but all the protagonists gain insights about themselves and others, or about the human experience, that are worth more than the paychecks. In Roy Hoffman's ``Ice Cream Man,'' Rick's job driving an ice cream truck is enriched by his daily visits with the storytelling Captain; in Mazer's own ``The Pill Factory,'' Meredith is hired to glue labels on jars of vitamins, and discovers through mastering the glue machine how to take control of her own life. Graham Salisbury's ``Forty Bucks'' is a darkly humorous story of two Hawaiian boys who work the graveyard shift at a Taco Bell, while the protagonist in David Rice's ``The Crash Room'' works in a hospital emergency room, where he is becoming inured of the endless suffering he encounters. Stories by Marilyn Sachs, Victor Mart°nez, and Lois Metzger are among those included; almost without exception, the pieces are thought-provoking and consciousness-raising, and are certain to ring a bell with teenagers working, unemployed, or planning their careers. (Fiction. 12+)
Pub Date: July 15, 1997
ISBN: 0-89255-223-9
Page Count: 208
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1997
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Hard-to-read story, hard-to-stop-reading writing.
A hardscrabble antihero’s coming out lands him in an off-the-grid conversion camp.
Connor Major of Ambrose, Illinois, has quite a mouth on him. But when it comes to the rite-of-passage revelation to his single, hardcore Christian mother that he’s gay, he can’t find his words. At the behest of his boyfriend, Ario, Connor begrudgingly comes out, which is where the book begins. His rocky relationship with his mother is disintegrating, his frustration with exuberantly out Ario grows, accusations of being the absentee father of his BFF’s baby boy haunt him, and he gets violently absconded to a Christian conversion camp in Costa Rica. And that’s all before the unraveling of a mystery, a murder, gunshots, physical violence, emotional abuse, heat, humidity, and hell on Earth happen in the span of a single day. This story points fingers at despicable zealots and applauds resilient queer kids. Connor’s physical and emotional inability to fully find comfort in being gay isn’t magically erased, acknowledging the difficulty of self-acceptance in the face of disapproving homophobes. Lord of the Flies–like survival skills, murder, and brutal violence (Tasers, spears, guns) fuel the story. And secret sex and romance underscore the lack of social liberty and self-acceptance but also support the optimistic hope of freedom. Connor is White, as is the majority of the cast; Ario is Muslim.
Hard-to-read story, hard-to-stop-reading writing. (Fiction 14-18)Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-63583-061-3
Page Count: 392
Publisher: Flux
Review Posted Online: June 29, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Another soaring success.
Wein returns with another emotional flight through World War II, this time in Scotland.
Three young people’s lives intersect in a remote Scottish village, their bond cemented by the unexpected receipt of the first Enigma machine to reach Allied hands. Characters who appear here from earlier volumes include: volunteer Ellen McEwen, respected by others who don’t know she’s a Traveller; flight leader Jamie Beaufort-Stuart, alive but with a flight log of dead friends; and 15-year-old biracial Jamaican English orphan Louisa Adair, employed (by phone, without disclosing her skin color) to care for an elderly but fierce German woman. All of them are bound by a sense of helplessness and a desire to make a difference; Wein shines at exploring the tension between the horrors of war and its unexpected pleasures, many thanks to friendships that could only exist during a time of upheaval. In many ways a small story about big things—fitting in a novel thematically focused on the ways individuals matter—this is historical fiction at its finest, casting a light on history (with some minor liberties, noted in the extensive backmatter) as well as raising questions still relevant today, particularly around class and race, nationality and belonging; unexpected connections across those gulfs lead to moments of love and heartbreak for readers and characters alike.
Another soaring success. (author’s note, resources) (Historical fiction. 12-18)Pub Date: Nov. 3, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-368-01258-4
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Disney-Hyperion/LBYR
Review Posted Online: Feb. 8, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
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