Although entertaining, this tale fails to fully plumb the depths of a moving and poignant topic.
Anna is dealing with one tragedy after another. Her best friend, Maggie, has life much easier—but barely recognizes that.
Based upon a true story, this tale is set in small-town Saskatchewan in 1948. Anna’s mother dies in childbirth, right after eliciting a promise from the seventh-grader that she’ll care for the fragile new baby. With an impoverished father who drinks too much and four siblings, including two much younger sisters, in addition to the baby, Anna leaves school to become surrogate mother to the brood. She illuminates her quiet despair in a believably desperate first-person narrative. In alternating chapters, Maggie relates that she’s the daughter of a loving Royal Canadian Mounted Policeman and a distant, often harsh mother. She frequently pushes back against her domineering mother and is rarely kind to her 5-year-old brother. The contrast between the two girls is perhaps starker than Young intended. As Maggie deals with a first boyfriend and smoking a stolen cigarette, Anna washes diapers and tenderly cares for her needy siblings. The immensity of the final tragedy that befalls Anna is crushing but also serves to completely trivialize Maggie’s various young-teen issues and her character, a shortcoming that’s exaggerated by a convenient, too-easy resolution of her trite problems. The cast appears to be an all-white one.
Although entertaining, this tale fails to fully plumb the depths of a moving and poignant topic. (Historical fiction. 10-14)Pub Date: Jan. 15, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-77203-264-2
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Wandering Fox
Review Posted Online: Oct. 14, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
Poignant, respectful, and historically accurate while pulsating with emotional turmoil, adventure, and suspense.
In the midst of political turmoil, how do you escape the only country that you’ve ever known and navigate a new life? Parallel stories of three different middle school–aged refugees—Josef from Nazi Germany in 1938, Isabel from 1994 Cuba, and Mahmoud from 2015 Aleppo—eventually intertwine for maximum impact.
Three countries, three time periods, three brave protagonists. Yet these three refugee odysseys have so much in common. Each traverses a landscape ruled by a dictator and must balance freedom, family, and responsibility. Each initially leaves by boat, struggles between visibility and invisibility, copes with repeated obstacles and heart-wrenching loss, and gains resilience in the process. Each third-person narrative offers an accessible look at migration under duress, in which the behavior of familiar adults changes unpredictably, strangers exploit the vulnerabilities of transients, and circumstances seem driven by random luck. Mahmoud eventually concludes that visibility is best: “See us….Hear us. Help us.” With this book, Gratz accomplishes a feat that is nothing short of brilliant, offering a skillfully wrought narrative laced with global and intergenerational reverberations that signal hope for the future. Excellent for older middle grade and above in classrooms, book groups, and/or communities looking to increase empathy for new and existing arrivals from afar.
Poignant, respectful, and historically accurate while pulsating with emotional turmoil, adventure, and suspense. (maps, author’s note) (Historical fiction. 10-14)Pub Date: July 25, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-545-88083-1
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: May 9, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2017
PROFILES
An endearing protagonist runs the first, fast leg of Reynolds' promising relay.
Castle “Ghost” Cranshaw feels like he’s been running ever since his dad pulled that gun on him and his mom—and used it.
His dad’s been in jail three years now, but Ghost still feels the trauma, which is probably at the root of the many “altercations” he gets into at middle school. When he inserts himself into a practice for a local elite track team, the Defenders, he’s fast enough that the hard-as-nails coach decides to put him on the team. Ghost is surprised to find himself caring enough about being on the team that he curbs his behavior to avoid “altercations.” But Ma doesn’t have money to spare on things like fancy running shoes, so Ghost shoplifts a pair that make his feet feel impossibly light—and his conscience correspondingly heavy. Ghost’s narration is candid and colloquial, reminiscent of such original voices as Bud Caldwell and Joey Pigza; his level of self-understanding is both believably childlike and disarming in its perception. He is self-focused enough that secondary characters initially feel one-dimensional, Coach in particular, but as he gets to know them better, so do readers, in a way that unfolds naturally and pleasingly. His three fellow “newbies” on the Defenders await their turns to star in subsequent series outings. Characters are black by default; those few white people in Ghost’s world are described as such.
An endearing protagonist runs the first, fast leg of Reynolds' promising relay. (Fiction. 10-14)Pub Date: Aug. 30, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4814-5015-7
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Caitlyn Dlouhy/Atheneum
Review Posted Online: July 19, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
SEEN & HEARD
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