Morris is an innocent caught in the winds of war, and young readers will eagerly anticipate future installments in the...
In his nightmares, high-school senior Morris sees “torn flesh and burned flesh and the end of everything we know, all dying there in the scorching jungle of Vietnam”; he and his friends die, and it’s his fault.
Ivan, Rudi, Beck and Morris have been friends since fourth grade. Now the war in Vietnam looms, and they pledge to not go voluntarily. But when Rudi receives his draft notice, they all sign up, each with a different branch of the military. Morris signs with the Navy, figuring he somehow can watch over his friends and keep them safe from the USS Boston, a heavy guided-missile cruiser. He later realizes he can’t, but it’s his “small crazy,” a belief that keeps him sane in the midst of war. Initiating a new series with this volume, Lynch offers something valuable: a very good war novel for a preteen and middle-school audience, with enough violence to be an honest portrayal of war, but without the sex and rough language that often keep such novels out of the hands of a ready audience. The story stays rooted in Morris’ first-person point of view, with flashbacks to develop characters, though Morris is the only one fully realized.
Morris is an innocent caught in the winds of war, and young readers will eagerly anticipate future installments in the series. (Historical fiction. 9-14)Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-545-27029-8
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Sept. 6, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2011
Well-educated American boys from privileged families have abundant options for college and career. For Chiko, their Burmese counterpart, there are no good choices. There is never enough to eat, and his family lives in constant fear of the military regime that has imprisoned Chiko’s physician father. Soon Chiko is commandeered by the army, trained to hunt down members of the Karenni ethnic minority. Tai, another “recruit,” uses his streetwise survival skills to help them both survive. Meanwhile, Tu Reh, a Karenni youth whose village was torched by the Burmese Army, has been chosen for his first military mission in his people’s resistance movement. How the boys meet and what comes of it is the crux of this multi-voiced novel. While Perkins doesn’t sugarcoat her subject—coming of age in a brutal, fascistic society—this is a gentle story with a lot of heart, suitable for younger readers than the subject matter might suggest. It answers the question, “What is it like to be a child soldier?” clearly, but with hope. (author’s note, historical note) (Fiction. 11-14)
Pub Date: July 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-58089-328-2
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Charlesbridge
Review Posted Online: May 31, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2010
Characteristically provocative gothic comedy, with sublime undertones. (Autobiographical fiction. 11-13)
An exhilarating summer marked by death, gore and fire sparks deep thoughts in a small-town lad not uncoincidentally named “Jack Gantos.”
The gore is all Jack’s, which to his continuing embarrassment “would spray out of my nose holes like dragon flames” whenever anything exciting or upsetting happens. And that would be on every other page, seemingly, as even though Jack’s feuding parents unite to ground him for the summer after several mishaps, he does get out. He mixes with the undertaker’s daughter, a band of Hell’s Angels out to exact fiery revenge for a member flattened in town by a truck and, especially, with arthritic neighbor Miss Volker, for whom he furnishes the “hired hands” that transcribe what becomes a series of impassioned obituaries for the local paper as elderly town residents suddenly begin passing on in rapid succession. Eventually the unusual body count draws the—justified, as it turns out—attention of the police. Ultimately, the obits and the many Landmark Books that Jack reads (this is 1962) in his hours of confinement all combine in his head to broaden his perspective about both history in general and the slow decline his own town is experiencing.
Characteristically provocative gothic comedy, with sublime undertones. (Autobiographical fiction. 11-13)Pub Date: Sept. 13, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-374-37993-3
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: April 5, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2011
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