Picture-book author Best’s first middle-grade novel sparkles and pops like a Fourth of July firecracker
In Queens during the summer of 1961, a shy 11-year-old white girl finds her voice and learns to use it.
Word-loving aspiring writer Shirley Alice Burns lives with her overprotective single mother and her gentle Russian-immigrant grandmother. Not one to rock the boat, Shirley always goes along with the crowd. But when she finds out the father she thought simply long absent is really deceased, she vows to confront her mother about it. Also on Shirley’s list of things to do once her “courage comes in”: stand up for herself when her teacher accuses her of plagiarism, tell her mother she’s too old for summer camp and that she wants to go to Lake Winnipesaukee (affectionately nicknamed “Lake Winni Pee”) with their large extended family instead, as well as telling her that she hates ballet and following her mother’s restrictive Safe-at-Home Doctrine. As revealed in Best’s precise, evocative third-person narrative, Shirley taps into the courage of her hero Pippi Longstocking and projects memories of her father onto a dead mouse she hides in the freezer. Shirley’s gradual change and just the right amount of lost innocence are punctuated by summer adventures with cousin Phillie; her disdain for her mother’s gassy boyfriend; her strong, loving bond with her grandmother; and her looming first kiss, courtesy of spin the bottle. This Queens neighborhood, with its menagerie of carefully drawn secondary characters, appears to be an all-white one.
Picture-book author Best’s first middle-grade novel sparkles and pops like a Fourth of July firecracker . (Historical fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Nov. 28, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-374-37052-7
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Margaret Ferguson/Farrar, Straus & Giroux
Review Posted Online: Aug. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2017
Charming, poignant, and thoughtfully woven.
An aspiring scientist and a budding artist become friends and help each other with dream projects.
Unfolding in mid-1980s Sacramento, California, this story stars 12-year-olds Rosalind and Benjamin as first-person narrators in alternating chapters. Ro’s father, a fellow space buff, was killed by a drunk driver; the rocket they were working on together lies unfinished in her closet. As for Benji, not only has his best friend, Amir, moved away, but the comic book holding the clue for locating his dad is also missing. Along with their profound personal losses, the protagonists share a fixation with the universe’s intriguing potential: Ro decides to complete the rocket and hopes to launch mementos of her father into outer space while Benji’s conviction that aliens and UFOs are real compels his imagination and creativity as an artist. An accident in science class triggers a chain of events forcing Benji and Ro, who is new to the school, to interact and unintentionally learn each other’s secrets. They resolve to find Benji’s dad—a famous comic-book artist—and partner to finish Ro’s rocket for the science fair. Together, they overcome technical, scheduling, and geographical challenges. Readers will be drawn in by amusing and fantastical elements in the comic book theme, high emotional stakes that arouse sympathy, and well-drawn character development as the protagonists navigate life lessons around grief, patience, self-advocacy, and standing up for others. Ro is biracial (Chinese/White); Benji is White.
Charming, poignant, and thoughtfully woven. (Fiction. 9-12)Pub Date: Jan. 12, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-06-300888-5
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Quill Tree Books/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Oct. 26, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
A deftly told story that dramatizes how Danes appointed themselves bodyguards—not only for their king, who was in the habit...
The author of the Anastasia books as well as more serious fiction (Rabble Starkey, 1987) offers her first historical fiction—a story about the escape of the Jews from Denmark in 1943.
Five years younger than Lisa in Carol Matas' Lisa's War (1989), Annemarie Johansen has, at 10, known three years of Nazi occupation. Though ever cautious and fearful of the ubiquitous soldiers, she is largely unaware of the extent of the danger around her; the Resistance kept even its participants safer by telling them as little as possible, and Annemarie has never been told that her older sister Lise died in its service. When the Germans plan to round up the Jews, the Johansens take in Annemarie's friend, Ellen Rosen, and pretend she is their daughter; later, they travel to Uncle Hendrik's house on the coast, where the Rosens and other Jews are transported by fishing boat to Sweden. Apart from Lise's offstage death, there is little violence here; like Annemarie, the reader is protected from the full implications of events—but will be caught up in the suspense and menace of several encounters with soldiers and in Annemarie's courageous run as courier on the night of the escape. The book concludes with the Jews' return, after the war, to homes well kept for them by their neighbors.
A deftly told story that dramatizes how Danes appointed themselves bodyguards—not only for their king, who was in the habit of riding alone in Copenhagen, but for their Jews. (Historical fiction. 9-12)Pub Date: April 1, 1989
ISBN: 0547577095
Page Count: 156
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: Oct. 17, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1989
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