After six years in her father's custody, Amelia, 12, escapes through a window at three a.m. to live with Mom and Janey, whose lesbian bond is in its ninth year. At first, Mom stays in New York to confuse Dad's detective while Amelia and Janey fly to San Francisco and set up house under new names; Amelia describes the anxious care required to keep their stories consistent and avoid attention. Though she doesn't go to school (they hire a tutor), she becomes close to a girl she meets at the library, but it's not an easy friendship: Elizabeth reads Amelia's secretiveness as racism (Amelia's not sure about bringing Elizabeth home, but it's not because she's black) or as lack of trust. Eventually, Amelia confides in her friend, and Elizabeth holds true (though her nice, strict parents have their prejudices). Then the detective tracks them down, and—forcibly and under threat of prosecution- -Dad takes Amelia back to Long Island, where she manages to make contact with Mom and will probably accept her offer to reopen the custody question in court. Salat's debut is carefully fashioned to present the issues: Amelia has always preferred her mother, whose relationship with Janey is mature, stable, and affectionate; her placement with Dad was a result of homophobia- -his and the court's. The main characters are likable and believable, though not shown in depth; Dad, however, is so one- dimensionally adamant that it's hard to credit Amelia's love for him. Even so, crafted with insight and skill. (Fiction. 11-14)
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-553-08670-7
Page Count: 184
Publisher: Bantam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1993
BOOK REVIEW
After witnessing the rising tide of anti-Semitism in Nazi Germany, Daniel is suddenly transported, at age 14, from his comfortable life in Frankfurt to a Polish ghetto, then to Auschwitz and Buchenwald—losing most of his family along the way, seeing Nazi brutality of both the casual and the calculated kind, and recording atrocities with a smuggled camera (``What has happened to me?...Who am I? Where am I going?''). Matas, explicating an exhibit of photos and other materials at the new United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, creates a convincing composite youth and experience—fictional but carefully based on survivors' accounts. It's a savage story with no attempt to soften the culpability of the German people; Daniel's profound anger is easier to understand than is his father's compassion or his sister's plea to ``chose love. Always choose love.'' Daniel survives to be reunited, after the war, with his wife-to-be, but his dying friend's last word echoes beyond the happy ending: ``Remember...'' An unusual undertaking, effectively carried out. Chronology; glossary. (Fiction. 11-14)
Pub Date: April 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-590-46920-7
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1993
If Rotten Ralph were a boy instead of a cat, he might be Joey, the hyperactive hero of Gantos's new book, except that Joey is never bad on purpose. In the first-person narration, it quickly becomes clear that he can't help himself; he's so wound up that he not only practically bounces off walls, he literally swallows his house key (which he wears on a string around his neck and which he pull back up, complete with souvenirs of the food he just ate). Gantos's straightforward view of what it's like to be Joey is so honest it hurts. Joey has been abandoned by his alcoholic father and, for a time, by his mother (who also drinks); his grandmother, just as hyperactive as he is, abuses Joey while he's in her care. One mishap after another leads Joey first from his regular classroom to special education classes and then to a special education school. With medication, counseling, and positive reinforcement, Joey calms down. Despite a lighthearted title and jacket painting, the story is simultaneously comic and horrific; Gantos takes readers right inside a human whirlwind where the ride is bumpy and often frightening, especially for Joey. But a river of compassion for the characters runs through the pages, not only for Joey but for his overextended mom and his usually patient, always worried (if only for their safety) teachers. Mature readers will find this harsh tale softened by unusual empathy and leavened by genuinely funny events. (Fiction. 11-13)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-374-33664-4
Page Count: 154
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1998
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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