A feel-good, message-driven book that may appeal to adults more than teens.
A pen-pal correspondence between an American girl and a Zimbabwean boy blossoms into a lifelong friendship.
In alternating chapters, the authors relate their story, which begins in 1997 when 12-year-old Caitlin chooses a boy in Zimbabwe for a pen-pal assignment. Caitlin’s privileged life in Pennsylvania differs tremendously from Martin’s hardscrabble life in millworkers’ housing, where his family shares one room with another one. The top student in his class, Martin dreams of studying at an American university, but even just continuing high school in Zimbabwe seems like a long shot. Caitlin, not recognizing the extent of Martin’s poverty, sends some of her babysitting money with her letters, and Martin’s family uses it for food. Eventually, Caitlin and her parents become Martin’s sponsors for his studies and help him obtain a scholarship to Villanova University in 2003. Written with journalist Welch, the heartfelt recollections read like an overlong magazine article. The early chapters in particular have the inauthentic feel of sentimentalized adult reminiscence, and they accentuate the difference between an American whose eyes are open to the value of international friendship and her less-enlightened classmates. The action builds toward the happy climax of Martin’s arrival in the United States, but at the same time, it conveys a sense of the power of do-gooder, take-charge Americans to effect change.
A feel-good, message-driven book that may appeal to adults more than teens. (photographs) (Memoir. 12 & up)Pub Date: April 14, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-316-24131-1
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2015
Best enjoyed by preexisting fans of the author.
Deaf, trans artist Man meditates on his journey and identity in this brief memoir.
Growing up in conservative central Pennsylvania was tough for the 21-year-old Deaf, genderqueer, pansexual, and biracial (Chinese/White Jewish) author. He describes his gender and sexual identity, his experiences of racism and ableism, and his desire to use his visibility as a YouTube personality, model, and actor to help other young people like him. He is open and vulnerable throughout, even choosing to reveal his birth name. Man shares his experiences of becoming deaf as a small child and at times feeling ostracized from the Deaf community but not how he arrived at his current Deaf identity. His description of his gender-identity development occasionally slips into a well-worn pink-and-blue binary. The text is accompanied and transcended by the author’s own intriguing, expressionistic line drawings. However, Man ultimately falls short of truly insightful reflection or analysis, offering a mostly surface-level account of his life that will likely not be compelling to readers who are not already fans. While his visibility and success as someone whose life represents multiple marginalized identities are valuable in themselves, this heartfelt personal chronicle would have benefited from deeper introspection.
Best enjoyed by preexisting fans of the author. (Memoir. 12-18)Pub Date: June 1, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-593-22348-2
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Penguin Workshop
Review Posted Online: March 24, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2021
Like many grammar books, this starts with parts of speech and goes on to sentence structure, punctuation, usage and style....
As she does in previous volumes—Grammar Girl’s Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing (2008) and The Grammar Devotional (2009)—Fogarty affects an earnest and upbeat tone to dissuade those who think a grammar book has to be “annoying, boring, and confusing” and takes on the role of “grammar guide, intent on demystifying grammar.”
Like many grammar books, this starts with parts of speech and goes on to sentence structure, punctuation, usage and style. Fogarty works hard to find amusing, even cheeky examples to illustrate the many faux pas she discusses: "Squiggly presumed that Grammar Girl would flinch when she saw the word misspelled as alot." Young readers may well look beyond the cheery tone and friendly cover, though, and find a 300+-page text that looks suspiciously schoolish and isn't really that different from the grammar texts they have known for years (and from which they have still not learned a lot of grammar). As William Strunk said in his introduction to the first edition of the little The Elements of Style, the most useful grammar guide concentrates attention “on a few essentials, the rules of usage and principles of composition most commonly violated.” After that, “Students profit most by individual instruction based on the problems of their own work.” By being exhaustive, Fogarty may well have created just the kind of volume she hoped to avoid.Pub Date: July 5, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-8050-8943-1
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2011
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