Engrossing, satisfying, and compassionate.
A boy, desperate and broken, and a young bear with its head caught in a bucket: Vrabel (Pack of Dorks, 2016, etc.) sensitively interweaves these two disparate plotlines.
Noah only gradually reveals the depth and breadth of his issues. His mom’s in jail for a third drunken driving offense. He’s living with her most recent boyfriend but lacks faith that any adult, even steadfast Jeff, can be relied upon. A year ago, right after his mom’s arrest, Noah tackled a mentally disabled kid on his own football team, his brutality leading to the league’s revoking their championship and barring the team altogether. And then there was the shoplifting incident that followed. Now it seems like everyone hates Noah—even teachers and school administrators, who disparage him and view him as a hopeless case. The only exception is Rina, a smart, unpopular classmate who remembers who Noah once was and understands both his journey to despair and a possible path to redemption. Together they launch a campaign to save the bear, and along the way, they save Noah, too. The characters’ races aren’t revealed and therefore imply the white default. Noah’s first-person narration is spot-on, age appropriate and full of anger with brief flashes of insight. The trope is well-worked; this effort rises above the pack, believable and ultimately uplifting.
Engrossing, satisfying, and compassionate. (Fiction. 11-14)Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5107-2527-0
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Sky Pony Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 5, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2018
Not for the faint of heart or stomach (or maybe of any parts) but sure to be appreciated by middle school zombie cognoscenti.
Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle meets Left for Dead/The Walking Dead/Shaun of the Dead in a high-energy, high-humor look at the zombie apocalypse, complete with baseball (rather than cricket) bats.
The wholesome-seeming Iowa cornfields are a perfect setting for the emergence of ghastly anomalies: flesh-eating cows and baseball-coach zombies. The narrator hero, Rabi (for Rabindranath), and his youth baseball teammates and friends, Miguel and Joe, discover by chance that all is not well with their small town’s principal industry: the Milrow corporation’s giant feedlot and meat-production and -packing facility. The ponds of cow poo and crammed quarters for the animals are described in gaggingly smelly detail, and the bone-breaking, bloody, flesh-smashing encounters with the zombies have a high gross-out factor. The zombie cows and zombie humans who emerge from the muck are apparently a product of the food supply gone cuckoo in service of big-money profits with little concern for the end result. It’s up to Rabi and his pals to try to prove what’s going on—and to survive the corporation’s efforts to silence them. Much as Bacigalupi’s Ship Breaker (2010) was a clarion call to action against climate change, here’s a signal alert to young teens to think about what they eat, while the considerable appeal of the characters and plot defies any preachiness.
Not for the faint of heart or stomach (or maybe of any parts) but sure to be appreciated by middle school zombie cognoscenti. (Fiction. 11-14)Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-316-22078-1
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: June 25, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2013
An outstanding addition to the inadequate-parent genre.
For 12-year-old, “fifty percent Swedish, twenty-five percent Haitian, twenty-five percent French” Felix, all of his scary stories are about the Ministry of Children and Family Development—the Canadian agency that has the power to take him from his mom and place him in foster care.
His flighty mother, Astrid (she’s the Swedish part), is both depressed and chronically under- or often unemployed. His father is mostly out of the picture. Astrid will do what she needs to, including artfully lying and stealing, to keep their heads—barely—above water as they descend into homelessness. As depicted with gritty realism, the pair has been living in a van for months, using public restrooms, and rarely having enough to eat. But Felix has two great friends, Winnie, who is Asian, and Dylan, who is white; they will watch his back whatever comes. Sadly, they have little idea of his truly dire situation since he’s so resourceful at hiding his problems in order to stave off the MCFD. When Felix is selected to appear on a quiz show, it seems as if it could offer a resolution for their troubles: Winning would earn him a $25,000 prize. Felix’s deeply engrossing and fully immersive first-person narrative of homelessness is both illuminating and heartbreaking. Although the story ends with hope for the future, it’s his winsome and affecting determination that will win readers over.
An outstanding addition to the inadequate-parent genre. (Fiction. 11-14)Pub Date: Sept. 11, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5247-6834-8
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Wendy Lamb/Random
Review Posted Online: June 10, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2018
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