This utterly fresh and winning collection of verse is in the voice of an unnamed teenager, whom readers will come to know really well through her introspective and spot-on observations. During the course of a school year in California that is divided into sections (Autumn, Winter, Spring), she welcomes back her best friend Leslie and then has a fight with her, plays Mozart duets on her violin with Yen-Mei, and learns about kissing with Carlo. She is a writer, and she works at it, and she’s dazzled when her teacher, in his honey-sweet Tennessee accent, suggests she’s good enough to be published in “Faan Powms.” She tries out for drama club, hangs out with her Great Aunt Ida, and ruefully examines her pull-and-tug relationship with an older sister. Employing many forms of verse, some rhymed, some not, she even writes a sonnet; all of them are accessible and exquisitely crafted. “Rehearsal” says in its entirety: “This music is so / amazing, it builds a nest / of tears in my throat.” She notes wryly when an annoying boy stops hanging around her “And lately I have missed / being annoyed.” Clayton’s (Three Rotten Eggs, p. 339, etc.) illustrations, a mix of collage and sketches, hint at each subject often in amusing or wry corollaries. The narrator says a great deal about writing: “I want to / make something / beautiful. / Peaches. / If I could / make peaches—grow them / from my pen . . . ” She gets her wish. (author’s note) (Poetry. 11-14)
Pub Date: Aug. 13, 2002
ISBN: 0-375-80158-8
Page Count: 144
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2002
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Concisely captures big, serious ideas about life and relationships.
An eighth grader in Greenwich Village finds solace in a kindred spirit during turbulent times.
Emily has loved books ever since leaving the orphanage in China to live with her white adoptive parents. But now that she’s been forced to move to Chien-Shiung Wu School (“named for a physicist who… // …was a total badass”), reading is a lifeline. Losing touch with her best friends and the scariness of the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic are bad enough. Even worse: Almost everyone at her new school speaks Cantonese and is already learning Mandarin. It’s just Emily and a few white and Black kids who are beginning speakers. Her family expects her to feel grateful for a chance to “get in touch with her roots.” Instead she feels exposed, embarrassed by her lack of cultural and linguistic knowledge. Amid her loneliness, she discovers Emily Dickinson, whose poems help her process complicated feelings about adoption, loss, race, and belonging. There’s also a mysterious connection between the two Emilys—could Dickinson’s ghost be guiding Emily to open up to new possibilities like making friends? Many readers will find this verse novel’s approach to Dickinson’s poems illuminating: They’re riddles to be solved, presented alongside contemporary Emily’s rephrased passages. Insights from adults in Emily’s life offer wisdom that readers may find thought provoking, although they may wish for some humor to offer occasional reprieve from the heavy themes.
Concisely captures big, serious ideas about life and relationships. (books and art referenced) (Verse fiction. 11-14)Pub Date: Aug. 27, 2024
ISBN: 9780593567012
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Make Me a World
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
Thirteen-year-old love at its finest.
Two seventh grade Boston girls meet in poetry club, fall in love, fight, and find their way back to each other in this verse novel.
Even though “Love at First Sight is not a thing,” Olivia and new girl Eden quickly become friends and then more. But Eden, whose mom has left and whose dad is homophobic, wants to keep their relationship secret. Eden also becomes part of a tightknit group of girls she names the Crash. After one of their parties, Olivia hurls a misogynistic slur at Eden and breaks up with her. Regretful, Olivia later comes up with a scheme to win Eden back: a poetry night where she will perform a poem of apology. Both girls are largely without supportive adult guidance—Olivia’s mother has depression, and her avoidant dad works long hours—so they make mistakes and correct them as best they can, relying on poetry, music, and friends to fill in the gaps. Their personalities shine through their beautifully crafted poems, full of aches, worries, and joys. Three final poems, set a few months later, provide a coda and some closure. Olivia’s poems are aligned left, Eden’s are aligned right; drafts of Olivia’s apology poems appear on lined paper in a spiral-bound notebook. Both girls are coded White; Olivia’s best friend is trans.
Thirteen-year-old love at its finest. (Verse fiction. 11-14)Pub Date: May 30, 2023
ISBN: 9780063256941
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Katherine Tegen/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 28, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
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