Baz is an excellent thief. She has been since the beginning, when Demi found her as a tiny child and she came to live with him in Fay’s den of child crooks in an (perhaps frustratingly) unspecified urban slum. No one is as good at picking pockets as the innocent-looking team of Baz and Demi, and they’re content to be Fay’s favorite children. When Demi steals a glittering ring from an uptown lady, they fall into a lengthy chain of betrayal and corruption. Spies within their own gang are the least of their problems; the ring belonged to the chief of police’s wife, and both the police and the mob are after them. Trusting anyone is dangerous, but Baz doesn’t want to end up like Fay and Demi, who trust no one. Lavish details of the hellish environment, from mud flats that drown the unwary to the festering garbage mountain on which enslaved children pick trash for the mob, derail the adventure’s forward momentum, slowing it to a crawl. What ought to be a thrilling chase drags, despite the charming, streetwise heroine. (Fiction. 12-13)
Pub Date: April 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-312-56330-1
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Chelsea Green
Review Posted Online: April 22, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2010
A teenager suffers through her parents’ separation in this smoothly stylized, if conventional, debut. Aurora’s world comes crashing down when she catches her artist father nuzzling a model. Rory, a talented artist herself, furiously burns her sketchbook; suddenly he’s gone, leaving Rory and her mother wallowing in teary guilt, sending back a letter with lines that infuriate: “one day you’ll understand,” and “someday, when you’re older . . . “ Rory stops all painting and drawing, and curls up around the hurt, stonewalling even her best friend, Nicky. Rory’s almost continual awareness of light and color gives her a convincing artist’s voice, and Mack sets her back on her feet in the end, with the help of time, Nicky’s loyalty, and a startling gift from her father: her charred sketchbook, rescued and repaired both as a sign of his love, and to remind her to believe in herself. Psychological insight here is but skin deep, and the characters play it pretty close to type, but readers may be affected by the story’s overall emotional intensity. (Fiction. 11-13)
Pub Date: March 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-439-11202-8
Page Count: 168
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 1999
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PLB 0-679-99030-5 Bodett (for adults, The Free Fall of Webster Cummings, 1996, etc.) tacks toward a younger audience with this tale of two siblings who prove they’re not ready to be on their own. With her fisherman father gone for yet another long stretch, September, and her brother, Ivan, keep up with chores and school lessons in their isolated Alaska cabin; then Ivan attempts to jury-rig a power connection for his video game, and shorts out both radios. Despite their father’s express prohibition, the two boat for town, 14 miles across the bay, to get the radios fixed. That first trip becomes a series after September and Ivan discover that the pleasures of the local french fries, chocolate shakes, and human contact outweigh the guilt of breaking promises. Ensuing complications and several poor decisions ultimately put them out in the bay when a “williwaw,” a sudden storm, howls in. It’s a wild, exciting climax, but the author reaches it only after a leisurely exploration of the push-pull relationship between two lonely children on the edge of adolescence. Reader-interest in these capable but not yet self-reliant characters may flicker in the face of Bodett’s overwritten prose and his tendency to harp on certain themes, such as Ivan’s video game addiction. Still, with the thrilling finish and singular setting, this is a promising effort. (Fiction. 11-13)
Pub Date: March 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-679-89030-0
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1999
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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