Smartly rigged with history and graced with quick dialogue, the novel sails with Laura's snappy quips. Unfortunately, the...
Modern sass combines with a historical twist, making an uneven blend of middle school melodrama and the bitter realities of slavery.
As she showed in How Lamar's Bad Prank Won a Bubba-Sized Trophy (2011), Allen has a flare for blending the austere with the audacious. In her new novel, she introduces readers to Laura Eboni Dyson, the latest in a long line of Lauras dating back to the Amistad. Overweight and popularity-challenged, the last thing Laura wants is to draw negative attention to herself. When her seventh-grade history teacher convinces Laura's grandmother, Mrs. Anderson, to allow her class to visit the crumbling slave shack at the rear of Mrs. Anderson's property, Laura is determined to derail the class trip. Baseball-loving Laura is deeply ashamed of the shack, which she calls “yesterday’s history,” and she thinks her classmates will scorn her for hanging onto that history. Laura may prove tiresome to readers; she’s tough, strong and self-assured in one scene and downright mealy-mouthed in the next. By the time Laura stops wallowing and realizes her profound connection to a long line of Lauras, readers may meet her epiphany with a quizzical, "Is that it?"
Smartly rigged with history and graced with quick dialogue, the novel sails with Laura's snappy quips. Unfortunately, the story's emotional core sinks, leaving readers unsatisfied and adrift . (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: April 23, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-06-199274-2
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Balzer + Bray/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Feb. 5, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2013
Hilarious and joyful.
Twelve-year-old Gabby is a golden child, and nothing can go wrong, until it does.
Gabby, the star pitcher for Luther Junior High, is about to complete her second no-hitter of the season when the game is suspended, everyone is evacuated, and the school is closed because of an asbestos situation. The young Latina is assigned to Piper Bell Academy for the duration, a very upscale private school. She creates a playbook, definitely not a mere diary, to state her goals and strategies for maintaining her status in her new school. She assumes that she will be begged to join the baseball team and achieve further greatness, all in spite of gentle warnings from her parents and best friend. But her plans go immediately, painfully awry and must be listed as losses in her book. Feeling completely vanquished, she quits baseball and joins the marvelously inept field hockey team. A bit of humble pie and determination to do the right thing brings about a satisfying conclusion. Middle-grade readers will identify with Gabby’s preteen angst, laugh at her mostly self-inflicted struggles, and cheer for her success. The playbook format, heavily illustrated with doodles and delightful action sketches, also serves the purpose of describing the characters’ physical appearances, including skin color and ethnicity, which are implied by naming conventions but never stated in the text.
Hilarious and joyful. (Fiction. 9-12)Pub Date: May 9, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-06-239180-3
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Katherine Tegen/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 5, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Remarkable.
A “half-Chinese and half-white” girl finds her place in a Little House–inspired fictional settler town.
After the death of her Chinese mother, Hanna, an aspiring dressmaker, and her White father seek a fresh start in Dakota Territory. It’s 1880, and they endure challenges similar to those faced by the Ingallses and so many others: dreary travel through unfamiliar lands, the struggle to protect food stores from nature, and the risky uncertainty of establishing a livelihood in a new place. Fans of the Little House books will find many of the small satisfactions of Laura’s stories—the mouthwatering descriptions of victuals, the attention to smart building construction, the glorious details of pleats and poplins—here in abundance. Park brings new depth to these well-trodden tales, though, as she renders visible both the xenophobia of the town’s White residents, which ranges in expression from microaggressions to full-out assault, and Hanna’s fight to overcome it with empathy and dignity. Hanna’s encounters with women of the nearby Ihanktonwan community are a treat; they hint at the whole world beyond a White settler perspective, a world all children deserve to learn about. A deeply personal author’s note about the story’s inspiration may leave readers wishing for additional resources for further study and more clarity about her use of Lakota/Dakota. While the cover art unfortunately evokes none of the richness of the text and instead insinuates insidious stereotypes, readers who sink into the pages behind it will be rewarded.
Remarkable. (Historical fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: March 3, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-328-78150-5
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Clarion Books
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
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