A satisfying, well-written, and authentic sequel highlighting the ways healing and self-love are ongoing processes.
Amid new challenges, Rain Washington, the Black girl readers met in Rain Rising (2022), continues her journey of healing old wounds and loving herself.
Changes abound during Rain’s first year at City High School. Her beloved brother is away at college, she’s in classes without her best friends, and she misses the healing circle she relied on in middle school for processing her feelings. To make matters worse, Rain isn’t clicking with her new counselor, who makes their time together feel more like an interrogation than a safe space for growth. When a sophomore boy showers her with compliments and invites her to meet alone at his home, Rain must decide how to proceed. With everything happening, she abandons some of her coping mechanisms, and the sadness she once faced begins to creep back in. Fortunately, she still has her support system, and they rally around as she remembers who she is, that she has choices, and that she’s more than the sum of her lowest moments. Contemporary issues are part of Rain’s and her friends’ lives, including the arrest and potential deportation of a close friend’s beloved uncle. The rhythm of the verse is engrossing, successfully allowing readers to connect with Rain’s struggles and triumphs. The authentic, skillfully paced dialogue captures the tension and evolution of Rain’s feelings and emotions as she explores her first romance and heartbreak.
A satisfying, well-written, and authentic sequel highlighting the ways healing and self-love are ongoing processes. (Verse novel. 10-14)Pub Date: Oct. 24, 2023
ISBN: 9780063159778
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 26, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
Riveting, inspiring, and sometimes hilarious.
If you made a recording to be heard by the aliens who found the iPod, what would you record?
For 11-year-old Alex Petroski, it's easy. He records everything. He records the story of how he travels to New Mexico to a rocket festival with his dog, Carl Sagan, and his rocket. He records finding out that a man with the same name and birthday as his dead father has an address in Las Vegas. He records eating at Johnny Rockets for the first time with his new friends, who are giving him a ride to find his dead father (who might not be dead!), and losing Carl Sagan in the wilds of Las Vegas, and discovering he has a half sister. He even records his own awful accident. Cheng delivers a sweet, soulful debut novel with a brilliant, refreshing structure. His characters manage to come alive through the “transcript” of Alex’s iPod recording, an odd medium that sounds like it would be confusing but really works. Taking inspiration from the Voyager Golden Record released to space in 1977, Alex, who explains he has “light brown skin,” records all the important moments of a journey that takes him from a family of two to a family of plenty.
Riveting, inspiring, and sometimes hilarious. (Fiction. 10-14)Pub Date: Feb. 28, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-399-18637-0
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: Oct. 18, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
Poignant, respectful, and historically accurate while pulsating with emotional turmoil, adventure, and suspense.
In the midst of political turmoil, how do you escape the only country that you’ve ever known and navigate a new life? Parallel stories of three different middle school–aged refugees—Josef from Nazi Germany in 1938, Isabel from 1994 Cuba, and Mahmoud from 2015 Aleppo—eventually intertwine for maximum impact.
Three countries, three time periods, three brave protagonists. Yet these three refugee odysseys have so much in common. Each traverses a landscape ruled by a dictator and must balance freedom, family, and responsibility. Each initially leaves by boat, struggles between visibility and invisibility, copes with repeated obstacles and heart-wrenching loss, and gains resilience in the process. Each third-person narrative offers an accessible look at migration under duress, in which the behavior of familiar adults changes unpredictably, strangers exploit the vulnerabilities of transients, and circumstances seem driven by random luck. Mahmoud eventually concludes that visibility is best: “See us….Hear us. Help us.” With this book, Gratz accomplishes a feat that is nothing short of brilliant, offering a skillfully wrought narrative laced with global and intergenerational reverberations that signal hope for the future. Excellent for older middle grade and above in classrooms, book groups, and/or communities looking to increase empathy for new and existing arrivals from afar.
Poignant, respectful, and historically accurate while pulsating with emotional turmoil, adventure, and suspense. (maps, author’s note) (Historical fiction. 10-14)Pub Date: July 25, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-545-88083-1
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: May 9, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2017
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