An engrossing tale set against a compelling, seldom-seen backdrop
Amid the chaos of the Spanish Civil War, a young girl begins to find her place in the world.
Twelve-year-old Anetxu “Ani” Largazabalaga spends her few free hours trying to recapture the idyllic times before her father left Guernica for the front. Her often-disagreeable mother sells sardines and never fails to remind Ani how much she has sacrificed to keep them from starvation. Ani finds her first real friend in 14-year-old Jewish Mathias García, who recently moved from Germany, where he and his mother were facing increasing restrictions. A simple trip to the movies embroils Ani and Mathias in a local network of spies helping the British get supplies through Franco’s blockade. While making house-to-house deliveries of sardines, the two deliver messages and hope that they are helping the war effort. After the infamous air raid lays the town to ruins, Ani and Mathias both face devastating losses and find refuge in a farm on the outskirts of Guernica. Gonzalez has the two characters handle the losses in vastly different but equally believable ways, and the inclusion of older, sympathetic characters to serve as a contrast to Ani’s mother will be appreciated by readers. Also notable are multiple characters with disabilities, including Mathias.
An engrossing tale set against a compelling, seldom-seen backdrop . (Historical fiction. 10-18)Pub Date: Oct. 9, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-375-86929-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Aug. 14, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2012
A promising debut.
The horrors of the Guatemalan civil war are filtered through the eyes of a boy coming of age.
Set in Chopán in 1981, this verse novel follows the life of Carlos, old enough to feed the chickens but not old enough to wring their necks as the story opens. Carlos’ family and other villagers are introduced in early poems, including Santiago Luc who remembers “a time when there were no soldiers / driving up in jeeps, holding / meetings, making / laws, scattering / bullets into the trees, / hunting guerillas.” On an errand for his mother when soldiers attack, Carlos makes a series of decisions that ultimately save his life but leave him doubting his manliness and bravery. An epilogue of sorts helps tie the main narrative to the present, and the book ends on a hopeful note. In her debut, Brown has chosen an excellent form for exploring the violence and loss of war, but at times, stylistic decisions (most notably attempts at concrete poetry) appear to trump content. While some of the individual poems may be difficult for readers to follow and the frequent references to traditional masculinity may strike some as patriarchal, the use of Spanish is thoughtful, as are references to local flora and fauna. The overall effect is a moving introduction to a subject seldom covered in fiction for youth.
A promising debut. (glossary, author Q&A) (Verse/historical fiction. 10-14)Pub Date: March 25, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-7636-6516-6
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: Dec. 23, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2014
An engaging novel-in-poems that imagines one earnest, impassioned teenage girl’s experience of the Japanese-American...
Crystal-clear prose poems paint a heart-rending picture of 13-year-old Mina Masako Tagawa’s journey from Seattle to a Japanese-American internment camp during World War II.
This vividly wrought story of displacement, told from Mina’s first-person perspective, begins as it did for so many Japanese-Americans: with the bombs dropping on Pearl Harbor. The backlash of her Seattle community is instantaneous (“Jap, Jap, Jap, the word bounces / around the walls of the hall”), and Mina chronicles its effects on her family with a heavy heart. “I am an American, I scream / in my head, but my mouth is stuffed / with rocks; my body is a stone, like the statue / of a little Buddha Grandpa prays to.” When Roosevelt decrees that West Coast Japanese-Americans are to be imprisoned in inland camps, the Tagawas board up their house, leaving the cat, Grandpa’s roses and Mina’s best friend behind. Following the Tagawas from Washington’s Puyallup Assembly Center to Idaho’s Minidoka Relocation Center (near the titular town of Eden), the narrative continues in poems and letters. In them, injustices such as endless camp lines sit alongside even larger ones, such as the government’s asking interned young men, including Mina’s brother, to fight for America.
An engaging novel-in-poems that imagines one earnest, impassioned teenage girl’s experience of the Japanese-American internment. (historical note) (Verse/historical fiction. 11-14)Pub Date: March 1, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-8075-1739-0
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Whitman
Review Posted Online: Jan. 28, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2014
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