Exquisitely understated design lends visual potency to a searing poetic evocation of the Birmingham church bombing of 1963. The unnamed fictional narrator relates the events of “[t]he year I turned ten,” this refrain introducing such domestic commonplaces as her first sip of coffee and “doz[ing] on Mama’s shoulder” at church. She juxtaposes these against the momentous events of the year: the Children’s March in Birmingham for which the narrator missed school, the March on Washington and the mass meetings at church that she found so soporific. The same matter-of-fact tone continues to relate what happened “[t]he day I turned ten:” “10:22 a.m. The clock stopped, and Jesus’ face / Was blown out of the only stained-glass window / Left standing. . . . ” Documentary gray dominates the palette, the only color angry streaks of red that evoke shattered window frames. The poems appear on recto accompanied by images of childhood—patent-leather shoes, pencils, bobby socks—while full-bleed archival photographs face them on verso. It’s a gorgeous memorial to the four killed on that horrible day, and to the thousands of children who braved violence to help change the world. (Poetry. 10-14)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2007
ISBN: 978-1-59078-440-2
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Wordsong/Boyds Mills
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2007
An entertaining continuation to a magical series that celebrates diversity with a magical twist.
With Rumpelstiltskin and his band of villains still on the loose, the students and staff of Fairy Tale Reform School are on high alert as they prepare for the next attack.
Classes are devoted to teaching battle techniques and conjuring new weapons, which narrator Gilly finds preferable to learning history or manners. But Maxine, her ogress friend, has had it with all the doom and gloom. The last straw is when the agenda at the Royal Lady-in-Waiting meeting is changed from “How to Plan the Perfect Fairy Garden Party” to designing flying rocks and creating flower darts. While on a class field trip to the village to investigate their future careers, Maxine finds a magic lamp housing a genie named Darlene. Her wish that everyone be happy works a little too well. War preparations are put on hold as the school fills with flowers, laughter, and plans for a musical production. But when Gilly is tapped to fill in for the local chief of the dwarf police, things really take a turn for the worse. The students, including fairies, ogres, and the part-human/part-beast offspring of Beauty and the ex-Beast, focus on friendship and supporting one another in spite of their differences. Humility, forgiveness, and loyalty are also highly regarded in the FTRS community. Human Gilly is white, but there is racial as well as species diversity at FTRS.
An entertaining continuation to a magical series that celebrates diversity with a magical twist. (Fantasy. 10-12)Pub Date: March 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4926-5167-3
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Sourcebooks Jabberwocky
Review Posted Online: Nov. 20, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2018
Middle school worries and social issues skillfully woven into a moving, hopeful, STEM-related tale.
Following the precise coordinates of geocaching doesn’t yield the treasure Kirby Zagonski Jr. seeks: his missing father.
Geeky eighth-grader Kirby can’t understand why his mother won’t call his dad after their generous landlady dies and they’re evicted for nonpayment of rent. Though his parents have been divorced for several years and his father, a wealthy developer, has been unreliable, Kirby is sure he could help. Instead he and his mother move to the Community Hospitality Center, a place “for the poor. The unfortunate. The homeless.” Suddenly A-student Kirby doesn’t have a quiet place to do his schoolwork or even a working pencil. They share a “family room” with a mother and young son fleeing abuse. Trying to hide this from his best friends, Gianna and Ruby, is a struggle, especially as they spend after-school hours together. The girls help him look for the geocaches visited by “Senior Searcher,” a geocacher Kirby is sure is his father. There are ordinary eighth-grade complications in this contemporary friendship tale, too; Gianna just might be a girlfriend, and there’s a dance coming up. Kirby’s first-person voice is authentic, his friends believable, and the adults both sometimes helpful and sometimes unthinkingly cruel. The setting is the largely white state of Vermont, but the circumstances could be anywhere.
Middle school worries and social issues skillfully woven into a moving, hopeful, STEM-related tale. (Fiction. 10-14)Pub Date: Sept. 12, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-68119-548-3
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: Aug. 6, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
