The conflict between individual and society takes place in a poorly constructed dystopia. Like everyone else in the colony of Harmony, Jacob is blind. The original 22nd-century colonists had turned to genetically engineered blindness to separate themselves from the sinful, bigoted Seers. Centuries later, the Truesighted colonists are proud of their controlled and violence-free society. As Jacob approaches his 13th birthday, he learns of cracks in Harmony’s purity: unevenly distributed food, government corruption, and the misery of his friend Delaney. As Jacob inexplicably gains sight (and becomes comfortable with concepts such as color and facial expression ridiculously quickly for a blind-from-birth boy in a blind society), he wonders if he can be reconciled to the rotten core of the only home he has ever known. An interesting concept marred by poor execution of the all-blind society and a too-evil villain. (Fiction. 10-12)
Pub Date: March 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-06-052285-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2004
Curtis debuts with a ten-year-old's lively account of his teenaged brother's ups and downs. Ken tries to make brother Byron out to be a real juvenile delinquent, but he comes across as more of a comic figure: getting stuck to the car when he kisses his image in a frozen side mirror, terrorized by his mother when she catches him playing with matches in the bathroom, earning a shaved head by coming home with a conk. In between, he defends Ken from a bully and buries a bird he kills by accident. Nonetheless, his parents decide that only a long stay with tough Grandma Sands will turn him around, so they all motor from Michigan to Alabama, arriving in time to witness the infamous September bombing of a Sunday school. Ken is funny and intelligent, but he gives readers a clearer sense of Byron's character than his own and seems strangely unaffected by his isolation and harassment (for his odd look—he has a lazy eye—and high reading level) at school. Curtis tries to shoehorn in more characters and subplots than the story will comfortably bear—as do many first novelists—but he creates a well-knit family and a narrator with a distinct, believable voice. (Fiction. 10-12)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-385-32175-9
Page Count: 210
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1995
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Despite Amelia E. Rye’s confession that, “I’m a very good liar. I curse, too,” she comes clean to readers in her “personal memoir,” in which she relates the difficulties of living with her bad-tempered mother, who was pushing 50 when Amelia was born. Mrs. Rye is too worn-out to muster any motherly feelings for her daughter. She forces Amelia to wear hand-me-downs that are decades out of fashion, causing the friendless girl to become the brunt of cruel pranks. Everything changes the day Fancy walks into Amelia’s fourth-grade class. New to the upstate New York town, the friendly African-American girl offers friendship and acceptance, the very things Amelia has been hankering for. The story moves quickly, and in its four-year span Amelia learns the truth about her dysfunctional family’s unhappy past. The 1960s-era setting is mostly irrelevant to the plot, the racial tension is unconvincing and Amelia’s observations are too often wise beyond her years. What propels this otherwise undistinguished coming-of-age story forward is the strong bond of friendship that deepens over time between Amelia and Fancy. (Historical fiction. 10-12)
Pub Date: May 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-374-36131-0
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: June 23, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2010
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