Better for bibliotherapy than recreational reading.
A detailed exploration of grief in one year of an eighth-grade girl's life.
It’s only been a few months since Corinna’s mom died of cancer, and her daily life is consumed with reminders of that fact. She can’t make herself throw away the expired containers of her mom’s favorite yogurt and still dials her mom’s cell phone number to hear her recorded message. She struggles with her friends’ casual mentions of their own mothers and doesn’t feel that she can talk to her bereaved father. But after joining a counseling group at school and discovering her mother’s old journal, Corinna begins to heal. As the anniversary of her mom’s death approaches, Corinna is able to face it armed with cherished memories and the anticipation of a family trip to Japan, a place that was special to her mother. Geithner was a clinical social worker before she was an author, and it shows. Corinna moves through the stages of grief with textbook precision, and too often her conversations with her friends or father sound like they come from an afterschool-special script on losing a family member. However, young teens who are dealing with this issue will easily identify with Corinna’s anger, confusion and eventual acceptance.
Better for bibliotherapy than recreational reading. (Fiction. 10-14)Pub Date: March 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-545-23499-3
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Dec. 13, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2012
A superb historical thriller.
Thirteen-year-old Paolo Crivelli dreams of being a hero in Nazi-occupied Florence.
It’s a tricky business living in an occupied city. The Allies are advancing from the south, Paolo’s father is missing (thought to be fighting for the Partisans), and the Crivelli family is caught between the Nazi occupiers and the sometimes ruthless Partisans. This first novel by acclaimed children’s picture-book writer and illustrator Hughes expertly captures the tension in the Crivelli home, as Rosemary tries to raise her two children and keep them safe while covertly supporting the Partisan cause. Not so easy with a son like Paolo, who risks sneaking out at night on his bicycle, looking for his own way to be a hero for the cause. There are plenty of heroes here, as layers of resistance to the Nazis are carefully delineated—the obvious bold resistance of the Partisans in the countryside, Rosemary’s agreement to house escaped prisoners of war in her cellar, a lifesaving tip from the captain of the local military police and even a sympathetic member of the Gestapo who conveniently finds nothing when searching the Crivellis’ cellar. The townspeople, a dog and even Paolo’s bicycle play a role in the resistance movement, though the dangers and the realities of war are always tangible in this fine novel.
A superb historical thriller. (Historical fiction. 10-14)Pub Date: April 23, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-7636-6037-6
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: Jan. 15, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Not for the faint of heart or stomach (or maybe of any parts) but sure to be appreciated by middle school zombie cognoscenti.
Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle meets Left for Dead/The Walking Dead/Shaun of the Dead in a high-energy, high-humor look at the zombie apocalypse, complete with baseball (rather than cricket) bats.
The wholesome-seeming Iowa cornfields are a perfect setting for the emergence of ghastly anomalies: flesh-eating cows and baseball-coach zombies. The narrator hero, Rabi (for Rabindranath), and his youth baseball teammates and friends, Miguel and Joe, discover by chance that all is not well with their small town’s principal industry: the Milrow corporation’s giant feedlot and meat-production and -packing facility. The ponds of cow poo and crammed quarters for the animals are described in gaggingly smelly detail, and the bone-breaking, bloody, flesh-smashing encounters with the zombies have a high gross-out factor. The zombie cows and zombie humans who emerge from the muck are apparently a product of the food supply gone cuckoo in service of big-money profits with little concern for the end result. It’s up to Rabi and his pals to try to prove what’s going on—and to survive the corporation’s efforts to silence them. Much as Bacigalupi’s Ship Breaker (2010) was a clarion call to action against climate change, here’s a signal alert to young teens to think about what they eat, while the considerable appeal of the characters and plot defies any preachiness.
Not for the faint of heart or stomach (or maybe of any parts) but sure to be appreciated by middle school zombie cognoscenti. (Fiction. 11-14)Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-316-22078-1
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: June 25, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2013
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