Insightful and sensitive, a solid character study.
An absorbing middle-grade story of a boy trying to come to terms with his father’s death.
Sixth-grader Gregory takes the long way home from school every day to avoid passing the Jiffy Mart where his minister father died in a car accident. Gregory was in the car at the time, which further intensifies his anxiety. His friends Matt and Teisha try numerous schemes to help Gregory face his fears, but nothing works. Meanwhile, Gregory’s schoolwork has begun to suffer badly except for math, the one subject that fascinates Gregory. Even worse, news has come down that Gregory’s school will be closed, his favorite teachers might lose their jobs, and the bus for the new school will stop at the dreaded Jiffy Mart. Hoping to forestall this, Gregory gets involved in a student effort to convince the authorities to keep the school open. During their door-to-door campaign, the friends meet an eccentric elderly lady and a girl who has lost her dog, bringing them together. Finally, Gregory realizes that he must conquer his fears on his own, even as he begins to understand the worth of his new friends and his own efforts. Terrell-Deutsch writes with simplicity and a compassion for her characters that will resonate with readers. The promotion of math as fun stands out as an added bonus.
Insightful and sensitive, a solid character study. (Fiction. 9-12)Pub Date: March 15, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-88995-503-5
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Red Deer Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 14, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2014
More serious in tone than Radiance (2010), this supernatural adventure story finds perpetually 12-year-old Riley and her 14-year-old guide, Bodhi, first battling then helping Rebecca, an angry ghost child who initially seems to be evil personified. After the death of her mother, Rebecca, the daughter of an unloving plantation owner in the 1700s, was ignored by her father and reared by her family’s uncaring household slaves, leaving her bereft and psychologically damaged. The slaves on the plantation were cruelly and barbarically treated, and they eventually rebelled, killing Rebecca and her father. Rebecca is holding the ghosts of some of these slaves in what could be called memory hell, a place where they must constantly relive their most nightmarish remembrances. Riley, who is dead and existing in the “Here & Now,” is compelled to go where angels fear to tread when Rebecca captures Bodhi and Riley’s faithful dog Buttercup. In the rather tedious adventure that follows, Riley frees her friends, then, with their help, tries to bring forgiveness and peace to the slaves and Rebecca, so they can all cross the bridge to the happiness that awaits on the other side. The backdrop of the story, a slave revolt in the West Indies, adds some historical weight, but the situation remains abstract and the characters only marginally interesting, leaving readers ultimately unengaged. (Ghost story. 9-12)
Pub Date: March 15, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-312-64825-1
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Square Fish
Review Posted Online: Feb. 10, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A laudable attempt to address an unfortunately still-timely subject, this novel feels more like a Modernist experiment than...
In 1959 on a Civil War battleground tour, a white northern boy has his own prejudices shaken when he sees Jim Crow in action in a Joycean exploration that seems uncertain of its audience.
Bobby (of indeterminate age), his Civil War–obsessed older brother, Ricky, and their mother take the scenic route on the way to deliver the boys’ grandmother and her car to her home in St. Petersburg. Meanwhile, 9-year-old African-American Jacob leaves his sister and her husband in Atlanta to visit relatives in small-town Dalton, Ga., and he's a little unclear about proper behavior around whites. When a combination of stress over marital problems and unnecessary, abject racial terror causes Bobby’s mother to total the car in Atlanta, they send Grandma south and, much to Bobby’s mortification, book a bus home. Bobby finds himself on the same bus with Jacob’s family on an emergency trip to find the boy, who’s gone missing, and Bobby’s worldview takes an epiphanic hit. The narrative shifts from Bobby's perspective in a focused, third-person voice to the first-person accounts of a number of secondary characters. These voices, particularly those of the African-Americans, are mostly indistinct, their accounts seesawing from elliptical to expository. This, together with historical references that will likely slip past children and sometimes tortured syntax, derails prolific series fantasist Abbott’s (The Secrets of Droon) attempt at an autobiographical historical novel.
A laudable attempt to address an unfortunately still-timely subject, this novel feels more like a Modernist experiment than a children's book. (Historical fiction. 9-12)Pub Date: July 19, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-374-34673-7
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: June 6, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2011
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