A niche read at best.
It’s 1989, and in San Francisco, everyone’s attention is focused on the World Series, where the Oakland A’s and San Francisco Giants are meeting for the first time. However, another event of epic proportion is about to rock everyone’s world, literally.
Jake Milkovsky, a 13-year-old white boy, loves baseball, but the very unusual rock he recently discovered is taking up more of his interest. On his quest to identify it, he makes friends with an older girl, learns a lot about geology, and faces terror when a giant earthquake strikes the Bay Area. All of this should combine for a terrifically engaging story. Unfortunately, it’s a swing and a miss. While the author is clearly eager to share a passion for science with young readers, there is little here to compel interest from those not already science-obsessed. The narrative reads like a textbook masquerading as story. Dialogue has a nostalgic feel, and it constantly veers into unnatural science lessons. Further, the portrayal of diverse side characters leaves much to be desired. The Latinx cultural identity of Jake’s best friend, Tony Trejos, is reduced to one (incorrectly accented) utterance of “¡Que loco!”; Japanese-American science teacher Mr. Hierbayashi is called Mr. H because “none of the kids even tried to pronounce his name,” but “he didn’t seem to mind”; and when amateur geologist Melody, a white girl, merely suggests that Jake share his discovery with professional scientists, Jake throws a fit and she must apologize repeatedly for being “pushy.”
A niche read at best. (teacher’s guide) (Fiction. 9-13)Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-943431-40-3
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Tumblehome Learning
Review Posted Online: Sept. 1, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2018
Moving and poetic.
A motherless boy is forced to abandon his domesticated fox when his father decides to join soldiers in an approaching war.
Twelve-year-old Peter found his loyal companion, Pax, as an orphaned kit while still grieving his own mother’s death. Peter’s difficult and often harsh father said he could keep the fox “for now” but five years later insists the boy leave Pax by the road when he takes Peter to his grandfather’s house, hundreds of miles away. Peter’s journey back to Pax and Pax’s steadfastness in waiting for Peter’s return result in a tale of survival, intrinsic connection, and redemption. The battles between warring humans in the unnamed conflict remain remote, but the oncoming wave of deaths is seen through Pax’s eyes as woodland creatures are blown up by mines. While Pax learns to negotiate the complications of surviving in the wild and relating to other foxes, Peter breaks his foot and must learn to trust a seemingly eccentric woman named Vola who battles her own ghosts of war. Alternating chapters from the perspectives of boy and fox are perfectly paced and complementary. Only Peter, Pax, Vola, and three of Pax’s fox companions are named, conferring a spare, fablelike quality. Every moment in the graceful, fluid narrative is believable. Klassen’s cover art has a sense of contained, powerful stillness. (Interior illustrations not seen.)
Moving and poetic. (Animal fantasy. 9-13)Pub Date: Feb. 2, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-06-237701-2
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Balzer + Bray/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Oct. 18, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2015
Never didactic, these poems interweave music, programming, family drama, and middle school as interconnected parts of Emmy’s...
A 12-year-old whose dreams of musicianship are shattered discovers a passion for code.
Emmy’s lonely at her new San Francisco school. When her pianist dad got a dream job at the symphony, the family moved from Wisconsin—her mom’s opera career is portable—but Emmy’s miserable. Devastated she doesn’t have the talent to follow in her parents’ footsteps, she ends up in computer club instead of choir. And it’s there, learning Java, that Emmy makes friends with Abigail—and discovers that coding gives her a joy she’d believed came only from music. Free-verse chapters are conventional at first, drawing poetic structures from musical metaphors. But as Emmy learns Java, the language and structure of programming seep into her poems. Music and code interweave (one poem presents Emmy and Abigail’s pair-programming as a musical duet). Typeface changes have myriad effects: showcasing software and musical terms, mirroring the way formatting helps programmers understand software, and reflecting Emmy’s emotional state. As she becomes more comfortable in her own skin, she grows aware of the many traumas that affect her family, classmates, and teachers, and readers will cheer to see them work collectively—like an orchestra or like software developers—to create something beautiful. Characters’ races are unspecified, but on the cover Emmy presents white and Abigail (whose braids are referred to repeatedly) as black.
Never didactic, these poems interweave music, programming, family drama, and middle school as interconnected parts of Emmy’s life. (glossary) (Verse fiction. 9-13)Pub Date: Sept. 24, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-358-04082-8
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Versify/HMH
Review Posted Online: May 7, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2019
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