Thought-provoking and intense—recommended for patient readers.
Choices and their unpredictable aftermaths form the backbone of Kephart’s (This Is the Story of You, 2016, etc.) latest.
White, 13-year-old Lizzie’s choice to spend the summer in the Adirondacks with Uncle Davy while her mother undergoes cancer treatment is simple. There, she can also visit her “all-year-round friend” Matias, a Salvadoran boy with proportionate dwarfism who’s a talented watercolor painter. But when Matias is kidnapped by escapees from a nearby prison, Lizzie makes a harder choice: to rescue him, braving 6 million acres of wilderness alone. Lizzie’s adventure unravels in an epic victim-impact statement, which she addresses to a faceless visitor: Caroline, the kidnappers’ accomplice. Angry, frantic, insightful, and vividly lyrical, Lizzie’s voice densely weaves together the disorienting landscape; memories of her absent, narcissistic father; and Matias’ stories of the beauty and danger of the country he fled. Framed in Lizzie’s elegies to his “myths” and “light,” Matias himself seems more akin to a legendary figure than a person, which lessens the emotional impact of his disappearance despite Lizzie’s distress. As Caroline’s part in several characters’ fates emerges, occasional sympathy for Caroline conflicts with the irreversible consequences of her choices. Readers, like Lizzie, will ponder the possibility of forgiveness; there are no easy answers, but the book ends on a hopeful note. Sulit’s illustrations of Matias’ postcards appear in full color throughout.
Thought-provoking and intense—recommended for patient readers. (Fiction. 11-14)Pub Date: June 5, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-4814-9153-2
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Caitlyn Dlouhy/Atheneum
Review Posted Online: April 24, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2018
Despite the stale fat-to-curvy pattern, compelling world building with a Southern European, pseudo-Christian feel,...
Adventure drags our heroine all over the map of fantasyland while giving her the opportunity to use her smarts.
Elisa—Princess Lucero-Elisa de Riqueza of Orovalle—has been chosen for Service since the day she was born, when a beam of holy light put a Godstone in her navel. She's a devout reader of holy books and is well-versed in the military strategy text Belleza Guerra, but she has been kept in ignorance of world affairs. With no warning, this fat, self-loathing princess is married off to a distant king and is embroiled in political and spiritual intrigue. War is coming, and perhaps only Elisa's Godstone—and knowledge from the Belleza Guerra—can save them. Elisa uses her untried strategic knowledge to always-good effect. With a character so smart that she doesn't have much to learn, body size is stereotypically substituted for character development. Elisa’s "mountainous" body shrivels away when she spends a month on forced march eating rat, and thus she is a better person. Still, it's wonderfully refreshing to see a heroine using her brain to win a war rather than strapping on a sword and charging into battle.
Despite the stale fat-to-curvy pattern, compelling world building with a Southern European, pseudo-Christian feel, reminiscent of Naomi Kritzer's Fires of the Faithful (2002), keeps this entry fresh. (Fantasy. 12-14)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-06-202648-4
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Greenwillow Books
Review Posted Online: July 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2011
If it were a Golden Age comic, this tale of ridiculous science, space dogs and humanoid aliens with flashlights in their hands might not be bad. Alas... Number Four is a fugitive from the planet Lorien, which is sloppily described as both "hundreds of lightyears away" and "billions of miles away." Along with eight other children and their caretakers, Number Four escaped from the Mogadorian invasion of Lorien ten years ago. Now the nine children are scattered on Earth, hiding. Luckily and fairly nonsensically, the planet's Elders cast a charm on them so they could only be killed in numerical order, but children one through three are dead, and Number Four is next. Too bad he's finally gained a friend and a girlfriend and doesn't want to run. At least his newly developing alien powers means there will be screen-ready combat and explosions. Perhaps most idiotic, "author" Pittacus Lore is a character in this fiction—but the first-person narrator is someone else entirely. Maybe this is a natural extension of lightly hidden actual author James Frey's drive to fictionalize his life, but literature it ain't. (Science fiction. 11-13)
Pub Date: Aug. 17, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-06-196955-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2010
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