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
Although Stevenson leaves the family’s future up in the air, she gives Wolf a victory that will resonate with readers
Convinced that doom is imminent, Wolf’s free-spirit mom uproots the family for a quixotic cross-country consciousness-raising campaign to save the honeybees.
Having researched the school project that set Jade, his mom, in motion, 12-year-old Wolf knows that the bees are in danger, but he’d rather stay put and go to school, and he really doesn’t want to wear the stupid bee costume. Wolf‘s perpetually angry teenage stepsister, Violet, figures out how to bring boyfriend Ty along despite severe parental disapproval. And while 5-year-old Saffron seems perfectly happy to dance around in her bee outfit, her withdrawn twin, Whisper, has stopped talking entirely. Spurred by both their own misery and Whisper’s distress, Wolf and Violet decide they have to take the future Jade says they won’t have into their own hands. Stevenson takes a setup that could easily devolve into farce and focuses instead on the kids’ very real emotions. Wolf is a terrific narrator, more self-aware than the average 12-year-old but in the end just as ready to rationalize selfishness, however necessary, as his mother is. The twins, Violet, and the unexpectedly helpful Ty emerge as three-dimensional characters, as do some of the adults the family encounters. Both Jade and Wolf’s stepfather, however, are less successfully drawn, the former cartoonishly monomaniacal and the latter a cipher.
Although Stevenson leaves the family’s future up in the air, she gives Wolf a victory that will resonate with readers . (Fiction. 10-14)Pub Date: Sept. 8, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4598-0834-8
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Orca
Review Posted Online: June 28, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2015
A predictable, fast-paced sports tale with some unexpected heart.
Harrison has led a hard-knock life up until he’s taken in by loving foster parents “Coach” and Jennifer.
After he inadvertently causes the man’s death, Harrison is taken from a brutal foster home run by a farmer who uses foster kids as unpaid labor, a situation blithely ignored by the county. His new foster parents are different. Coach is in charge of the middle school football team, and all 13-year-old Harrison has ever wanted to do is to play football, the perfect outlet for his seething undercurrent of anger at life. Oversized for his age, he’s brilliant at the game but also over-the-top aggressive, until a hit makes his knee start aching—and then life deals him another devastating blow. The pain isn’t an injury but bone cancer. Many of the characters—loving friends Justin and Becky, bully Leo, a mean-spirited math teacher, cancer victim Marty and the major, an amputee veteran who comes to rehabilitate Harrison after life-changing surgery—are straight out of the playbook for maudlin middle-grade fiction. Nevertheless, this effort edges above trite because of well-depicted football scenes and the sheer force of Harrison himself. His altogether believable anger diminishes his likability but breathes life into an otherwise stock role.
A predictable, fast-paced sports tale with some unexpected heart. (Fiction. 11-14)Pub Date: Sept. 18, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-06-208956-4
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 31, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2012
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