Despite a lack of gray area, these educational short stories make for appealing, quick reads.
In a series of short stories that integrate English and Spanish, characters face love, loss and hard decisions, while consequences follow closely behind.
A boy witnesses his friend’s death by a stray bullet and grows up to become a protective father. A teenager gives up his last few dollars to buy a disappointing firecracker. A young man discovers his beloved grandmother needs him more than he needs her. Bertrand offers characters that inhabit their lives with a predictability that younger readers will find reassuring and older readers may find frustrating. In these microworlds, people who behave badly are punished accordingly, and those who make positive decisions are rewarded. Bertrand’s characters are well-crafted and manage to suggest lives beyond the page, but the dichotomous nature of morality in her stories can be distracting for readers who, even at a young age, know this isn’t a reflection of the real world. The stories contain many natural occurrences of Spanish vocabulary, and the Spanish version of the entire collection appears later in the book. Study questions for readers supply another layer of educational content in a book that appears written with classrooms in mind.
Despite a lack of gray area, these educational short stories make for appealing, quick reads. (Short stories. 10-13)Pub Date: May 13, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-55885-784-1
Page Count: 76
Publisher: Piñata Books/Arte Público
Review Posted Online: March 30, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2014
Basing her novel on a one-page story written by an 11-year-old child shortly before her death from leukemia, Bennett (Life in the Fat Lane, 1998, etc.) creates a tale of courage personified. A herd of miniature zebras appears before Becky Zaslow on the day she is diagnosed with childhood cancer—leukemia. During times of painful treatment, the zebras take Becky away to Africa and the Serengeti where they fight off tough predators, cross the treacherous crocodile-filled Mara River, and tell tales about Zink, a mythological polka-dotted zebra. Becky’s secret journal outlines the course of each treatment and is interspersed with the tale of these playful zebras; they help her to remain courageous despite her fears. The zebras, not medical professionals, prepare Becky for death when her bone marrow transplant fails and she succumbs to a respiratory infection. As one of the zebras, Ice Z, tells her, “True courage is admitting we’re afraid and fighting the predators anyway.” After her death, Becky, as Zink, joins the zebra herd. With three pages of acknowledgments and a lengthy afterword, readers may gain more than they need to know about the true aspects of this poignant story, but the embellishments don’t interfere with the raw emotions explored, or the power of Becky’s journey as she learns to run with the herd. (glossary) (Fiction 11-13)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-385-32669-6
Page Count: 222
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1999
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Raisa's sister, Henda, has earned enough money to send for Raisa to join her in the goldineh medina of America. When Raisa arrives in 1910 New York from her Polish shtetl, she finds Henda missing. Responsible for supporting both herself and a newly orphaned toddler, Raisa finds a job at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory. Raisa's friends, described in language rich with the cadences of Yiddish, each have jealousies, loves and flaws; they're not mere trajectories toward tragedy. But tragedy does strike, with the real-life factory fire that killed 146 workers. Vivid description of the deaths—of workers trapped on higher floors or leaping from windows to choose a faster death—unavoidably invites comparisons with another, more recent tragedy. The comparison serves the novel well; when the prose isn't strong enough for sufficient horror, visceral memories of 9/11 will do the trick (at least for those readers old enough to remember). After some tear-jerking, the happy conclusion comes too suddenly—shockingly so. The journey, however, is satisfying enough on its own. (Historical fiction. 11-13)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-670-01245-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Sept. 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2010
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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