Like its protagonist, full of heart.
Ren (short for Renata) spends her summer after sixth grade in a long-abandoned town near her Midwest home not far from the Mississippi River.
Though the sign for Fortune shows the population as 12, down from 128, Ren has never seen anyone in the dusty streets of the old town. It’s only when a temporary falling out with her mother leads Ren to try to rent a room at the old Fortune Consolidated School, recently turned boardinghouse, that she discovers both the lively past and present of the town. The boardinghouse’s owner, spry but elderly Hildy, plans to create a museum in what was once the school gymnasium. The museum will be filled with memorabilia from the town’s heyday making buttons from clam and mussel shells pulled from the Mississippi. There’s a fortune hidden somewhere in the school—left for Hildy by a brother who never returned from the Korean War. The discovery of its hiding place is left to Ren’s sleuthing with the help of newfound friends. Ren as narrator is appealing: pragmatic, smart, and candid. Ray’s narrative is rich and diverting, full of real history and a complex story for each character, and she adroitly gathers all the threads together. An author’s note explains the novel’s back story in the true history of the Mississippi’s button towns, now faded away.
Like its protagonist, full of heart. (Fiction. 9-12)Pub Date: Nov. 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-374-30065-4
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Margaret Ferguson/Farrar, Straus & Giroux
Review Posted Online: Aug. 4, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2015
Poet Alexander deftly reveals the power of the format to pack an emotional punch.
Basketball-playing twins find challenges to their relationship on and off the court as they cope with changes in their lives.
Josh Bell and his twin, Jordan, aka JB, are stars of their school basketball team. They are also successful students, since their educator mother will stand for nothing else. As the two middle schoolers move to a successful season, readers can see their differences despite the sibling connection. After all, Josh has dreadlocks and is quiet on court, and JB is bald and a trash talker. Their love of the sport comes from their father, who had also excelled in the game, though his championship was achieved overseas. Now, however, he does not have a job and seems to have health problems the parents do not fully divulge to the boys. The twins experience their first major rift when JB is attracted to a new girl in their school, and Josh finds himself without his brother. This novel in verse is rich in character and relationships. Most interesting is the family dynamic that informs so much of the narrative, which always reveals, never tells. While Josh relates the story, readers get a full picture of major and minor players. The basketball action provides energy and rhythm for a moving story.
Poet Alexander deftly reveals the power of the format to pack an emotional punch. (Verse fiction. 9-12)Pub Date: March 18, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-544-10771-7
Page Count: 240
Publisher: HMH Books
Review Posted Online: Dec. 17, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2014
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
The journey is even gently funny—Omakayas’s brother spends much of the year with a porcupine on his head. Charming and...
This third entry in the Birchbark House series takes Omakayas and her family west from their home on the Island of the Golden-Breasted Woodpecker, away from land the U.S. government has claimed.
Difficulties abound; the unknown landscape is fraught with danger, and they are nearing hostile Bwaanag territory. Omakayas’s family is not only close, but growing: The travelers adopt two young chimookoman (white) orphans along the way. When treachery leaves them starving and alone in a northern Minnesota winter, it will take all of their abilities and love to survive. The heartwarming account of Omakayas’s year of travel explores her changing family relationships and culminates in her first moon, the onset of puberty. It would be understandable if this darkest-yet entry in Erdrich’s response to the Little House books were touched by bitterness, yet this gladdening story details Omakayas’s coming-of-age with appealing optimism.
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-06-029787-9
Page Count: 208
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2008
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
