Despite flaws, a realistic—and much-needed—portrait of older-child adoption.
Four years ago, Jaden, 12, was adopted from Romania, but he still grieves for the birth mother who abandoned him; accompanying his parents to Kazakhstan to adopt his new brother, Jaden’s confused feelings intensify.
Jaden doesn’t remember his biological mother, and memories of the years between her abandonment and his adoption are vague but horrific. He’s learned to use his passionate interest in electricity to calm himself. After years of therapy, he’s stopped setting fires, but he continues to hoard food and to steal. He recognizes that his behaviors cause his parents pain and exhaustion. In Kazakhstan, everyone’s expectations are upended. As his parents struggle to accept new adoption ground rules, Jaden befriends a toddler and the prickly driver assigned to his family, with whom he finds common ground. Kadohata excels at turning complicated realities into compelling middle-grade fiction, but this is difficult narrative terrain. Children traumatized by abandonment, abuse and neglect; well-intentioned but naïve affluent parents adopting children in impoverished countries where corruption is rife: These subjects challenge adult comprehension. No surprise then that distilling these matters into compact storytelling for young readers proves problematic. Much-needed exposition slows the pace, yet troubling questions remain: Jaden’s parents don’t question the ethics of an adoption that requires paying a facilitator $14,000 in crisp new $100 bills, even after things go wrong.
Despite flaws, a realistic—and much-needed—portrait of older-child adoption. (Fiction. 10-14)Pub Date: Sept. 2, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4424-1275-0
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Atheneum
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2014
Rich and strange (and kitted out with an eye-catching cover), but stronger in the set pieces than the internal logic.
Chainani works an elaborate sea change akin to Gregory Maguire’s Wicked (1995), though he leaves the waters muddied.
Every four years, two children, one regarded as particularly nice and the other particularly nasty, are snatched from the village of Gavaldon by the shadowy School Master to attend the divided titular school. Those who survive to graduate become major or minor characters in fairy tales. When it happens to sweet, Disney princess–like Sophie and her friend Agatha, plain of features, sour of disposition and low of self-esteem, they are both horrified to discover that they’ve been dropped not where they expect but at Evil and at Good respectively. Gradually—too gradually, as the author strings out hundreds of pages of Hogwarts-style pranks, classroom mishaps and competitions both academic and romantic—it becomes clear that the placement wasn’t a mistake at all. Growing into their true natures amid revelations and marked physical changes, the two spark escalating rivalry between the wings of the school. This leads up to a vicious climactic fight that sees Good and Evil repeatedly switching sides. At this point, readers are likely to feel suddenly left behind, as, thanks to summary deus ex machina resolutions, everything turns out swell(ish).
Rich and strange (and kitted out with an eye-catching cover), but stronger in the set pieces than the internal logic. (Fantasy. 11-13)Pub Date: May 14, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-06-210489-2
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Feb. 12, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2013
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A captivating book situated in present-day discourse around the refugee crisis, featuring two boys who stand by their high...
Two parallel stories, one of a Syrian boy from Aleppo fleeing war, and another of a white American boy, son of a NATO contractor, dealing with the challenges of growing up, intersect at a house in Brussels.
Ahmed lost his father while crossing the Mediterranean. Alone and broke in Europe, he takes things into his own hands to get to safety but ends up having to hide in the basement of a residential house. After months of hiding, he is discovered by Max, a boy of similar age and parallel high integrity and courage, who is experiencing his own set of troubles learning a new language, moving to a new country, and being teased at school. In an unexpected turn of events, the two boys and their new friends Farah, a Muslim Belgian girl, and Oscar, a white Belgian boy, successfully scheme for Ahmed to go to school while he remains in hiding the rest of the time. What is at stake for Ahmed is immense, and so is the risk to everyone involved. Marsh invites art and history to motivate her protagonists, drawing parallels to gentiles who protected Jews fleeing Nazi terror and citing present-day political news. This well-crafted and suspenseful novel touches on the topics of refugees and immigrant integration, terrorism, Islam, Islamophobia, and the Syrian war with sensitivity and grace.
A captivating book situated in present-day discourse around the refugee crisis, featuring two boys who stand by their high values in the face of grave risk and succeed in drawing goodwill from others. (Historical fiction. 10-14)Pub Date: Aug. 7, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-250-30757-6
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Roaring Brook Press
Review Posted Online: June 10, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2018
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