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
This realistic debut inspires with a grounded heroine who comes of age as she “disappears home.” (Historical fiction. 12-15)
A teen growing up in an out-of-control hippie commune in Oregon in 1970 discovers what it’s like to have a stable home when she’s transplanted to rural California.
After months of conspiring, 14-year-old Shoshanna, her younger sister, and their mother, Ella, flee “the hunger, the violence, the drugs, [and] the chaos” of Sweet Earth Farm, where they’ve lived like prisoners for five years. Desperate to escape an abusive, addicted father, they “disappear” to San Francisco, arriving penniless and homeless in Haight-Ashbury, where Ella reconnects with her friend Judy, who moves them to a rural, coastal town where a kind man gives them a place to live in exchange for working on his farm. Afraid her father will follow and knowing she’ll “have to work hard to keep her mother going,” Shoshie flourishes with a safe place, nourishing food and earth-mother Judy’s care. When Ella becomes gravely ill, once again Shoshie’s future’s uncertain, until she realizes she has a new community supporting her. Details of the free-spirited, hippie lifestyle and attitudes provide authentic cultural context for Shoshie’s troubling, urgent journey from desperate victim to hopeful survivor.
This realistic debut inspires with a grounded heroine who comes of age as she “disappears home.” (Historical fiction. 12-15)Pub Date: March 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-8075-2468-8
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Whitman
Review Posted Online: Jan. 9, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2015
Recommended for reality TV fans and genealogy buffs
After she’s caught escaping her harsh boarding school, Avery reluctantly enters the competition devised by her imperious grandmother to determine who among the mostly despicable VanDemere clan will inherit the family business and fortune.
Each timed challenge (the competition’s more reality TV than The Westing Game) is crafted around character traits Mrs. VanDemere admires: intellect, fortitude, resourcefulness, unity, commitment, courage and integrity (but not mercy, compassion or forgiveness, Avery notices). Travel and genealogical research (ancestors include a Scottish lord, two Pilgrims, and veterans of the Revolutionary and Civil wars) are required. Unless expressly prohibited in the rules, unethical behavior is allowed. To secure Avery’s participation, the family lawyer, whose gorgeous son Avery selects as her helper, reveals that contrary to what she’s been told, her Croatian mother’s alive; with each stage Avery completes, he’ll release one of her mother’s letters. Abandoned by her father, bullied by cousins and uncles, Avery now discovers her grandmother’s cruelty to her mother. Though the novel is entertaining, with two incompatible storylines, it never quite coheres. The high-concept plot is the more successful—watching the avaricious, sneaky, squabbling VanDemere clan compete and cheat is a hoot—but juxtaposed against Avery’s efforts to reconstruct the somber past and reconnect with her mother, it seems trivial and Avery’s willing participation, questionable.
Recommended for reality TV fans and genealogy buffs . (Thriller. 12-15)Pub Date: Feb. 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-61963-219-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2014
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