Yuko's story and her meeting with Christian are worth reading and can start the conversation with young readers about...
Thirteen-year-old Christian's first funeral is his great-grandfather Will's, and he's already bewildered when he and his family are leaving the church and run into protesters who call GG Will a murderer because of his involvement in the Manhattan project.
A couple of weeks later, the school bully also taunts Christian about GG Will being a killer, prompting Christian to learn that the Manhattan project team developed the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan. Poulsen begins the book with three hard-hitting pages about Yuko, a survivor Christian will meet after a run of extraordinary fortune involving a school trip and a chance meeting with Yuko's granddaughter. Readers revisit her story after the bombing in pieces interspersed through the first half, which is dominated by Christian's preteen school days and lags. The second half is more successful and, despite incongruous supernatural elements, feels like the real heart of the book. Yuko's story of survival is inherently more compelling than the football game Christian's team wins against all odds or his deaf best friend, Carson, also white, who seems to serve no real purpose beyond acting as a sounding board for Christian. The bully is nothing but stereotype. There's a great story here, but it's buried in mundane fluff.
Yuko's story and her meeting with Christian are worth reading and can start the conversation with young readers about Hiroshima and Nagasaki. (Fiction. 12-15)Pub Date: Nov. 15, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4597-3637-5
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Dundurn
Review Posted Online: Sept. 18, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2016
It’s the haunting details of those around Kai that readers will remember.
Kai’s life is upended when his coastal village is devastated in Japan’s 2011 earthquake and tsunami in this verse novel from an author who experienced them firsthand.
With his single mother, her parents, and his friend Ryu among the thousands missing or dead, biracial Kai, 17, is dazed and disoriented. His friend Shin’s supportive, but his intact family reminds Kai, whose American dad has been out of touch for years, of his loss. Kai’s isolation is amplified by his uncertain cultural status. Playing soccer and his growing friendship with shy Keiko barely lessen his despair. Then he’s invited to join a group of Japanese teens traveling to New York to meet others who as teenagers lost parents in the 9/11 attacks a decade earlier. Though at first reluctant, Kai agrees to go and, in the process, begins to imagine a future. Like graphic novels, today’s spare novels in verse (the subgenre concerning disasters especially) are significantly shaped by what’s left out. Lacking art’s visceral power to grab attention, verse novels may—as here—feel sparsely plotted with underdeveloped characters portrayed from a distance in elegiac monotone. Kai’s a generic figure, a coat hanger for the disaster’s main event, his victories mostly unearned; in striking contrast, his rural Japanese community and how they endure catastrophe and overwhelming losses—what they do and don’t do for one another, comforts they miss, kindnesses they value—spring to life.
It’s the haunting details of those around Kai that readers will remember. (author preface, afterword) (Verse fiction. 12-14)Pub Date: Jan. 12, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-553-53474-0
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Sept. 15, 2015
A somewhat entertaining, fast-paced journey that fizzles at the end.
A teenager runs away to Seattle, hoping to locate her missing sister.
Fifteen-year-old Eleanor idolizes her older sister, Sam, despite their being complete opposites: Sam is outgoing and wild, while socially awkward Eleanor is known as Little Miss Perfect, always doing the right and safe thing. After Sam runs away from home, the only communication she has with Eleanor are three postcards sent from Seattle. Eleanor decides to trace her 18-year-old sister’s footsteps, leaving her messages and hopping on a bus to find her. But when Sam doesn’t meet her at the bus depot, Eleanor, who has no real plan, has to learn how to survive on her own while searching the city for her sister. While the close bond between the girls is well depicted through flashbacks, the reveal of an important secret ultimately feels anticlimactic. A major plot point relies too heavily on chance and coincidence to be fully believable. While the color scheme, cityscapes, and background illustrations are atmospheric, the manga-inspired drawing style comes across as dated and flat. The depiction of the fabricated stories Eleanor tells is intriguing, as are the themes of friendship, living in the moment, and maintaining hope; unfortunately, none are thematically strong enough to resonate. The emotional impact of Eleanor’s experiences is diluted by her at times humorous narration. Eleanor and the main cast read as White.
A somewhat entertaining, fast-paced journey that fizzles at the end. (Graphic novel. 12-15)Pub Date: April 26, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-316-50023-4
Page Count: 280
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: April 12, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2022
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