It all begins when Zebby quits the Truman Middle School Bugle in protest over the newspaper advisor’s refusal to let her say anything negative about the school. Zebby and her friend Amr then put together an alternative website: www.truthabouttruman.com. After the site catches on with the popular kids, Zebby and Amr are off and running, writing critical articles and publishing comics and opinion pieces by anonymous students. Events take an unfortunate turn when someone begins adding malicious posts regarding a popular girl who was once a friend of Zebby and Amr’s, and things get worse when she is untruthfully outed as a lesbian. Told from multiple perspectives as a compilation of the points of view of all involved, this is an exercise in ethics and morality, particularly pertinent given the power of the Internet. Though sometimes a bit pedantic, this is a realistic portrayal of the negative influence of bullying, cliques, and peer pressure as they might affect tweens inside and outside the online world. (Fiction. 10-13)
Pub Date: April 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-8075-8095-0
Page Count: 170
Publisher: Whitman
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2008
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Proud mountainfolk, the Coe family has resided in Indian Creek, North Carolina, since 1844. Joe Coe fixes electrical appliances; 12-year-old Dovey and 13-year-old Amos collect healing herbs to sell. Dovey's older sister, Caroline, is a rare beauty who has dreams of escaping small-town life. Their tranquil home life is threatened when Parnell Caraway, son of the richest man in town, sets his sights on Caroline. He is so determined to marry her and destroy her dreams of becoming a teacher that he forces her hand at a send-off party in her honor and faces public humiliation as a result. Unable to handle rejection, Parnell locks up the Coe's dog in revenge, forcing Dovey to retrieve it and to witness its brutal murder. She tries to stop it and is attacked by Parnell. When she awakens from the beating, Parnell is dead at her side and she is falsely accused of murder. Assigned an inexperienced district attorney, Dovey has to solve the murder herself or face imprisonment. In the end, she is spared the injustice of being sent to a girls’ detention center; Caroline owns up to the fact that her flirtations with Parnell have caused this disastrous result; and Amos reveals to his sister that he, in fact, killed Parnell to spare her additional abuse at his hands. Dovey’s fresh, clear voice in southern dialect cuts through the social behavior of the locale and time period to speak the truth, which all of the other older and wiser characters refuse to see. This fabulously feisty heroine will win your heart. (Fiction. 10-12)
Pub Date: May 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-689-83174-9
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Atheneum
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2000
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The air of strangeness hanging about a new classmate turns out to have just cause in this tale of a bookworm and a child cursed with a unique kind of second sight. “Cursed” is the right word, for not only can’t Imogen help seeing what’s in store for living people, but just touching a book, even a novel, makes her an unwilling participant in whatever terrors or tensions the story inside bears. Observing the reactions Imogen can’t quite conceal, Melanie gradually figures out her terrible secret and its cause—an odd necklace passed down to Imogen by her otherworldly mother. Though Imogen refuses to see it, whenever she takes the necklace off, she becomes a different person, gregarious and free. Melanie faces a tough decision: to keep her nose in her beloved books and out of what is, after all, not her business, or find a way to separate Imogen from the talisman and dispose of it? With some reluctance, Mel concocts a secret, clever plan, only to find in the suspenseful climax that the necklace has powerful defenses of its own that require some unexpected sacrifices to overcome. As in The Tulip Touch (1997), Fine has placed two young people with unusually complex motives and characters into a challenging, sometimes scary situation: readers will not be putting this one down until the last page. (Fiction. 10-12)
Pub Date: June 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-385-32757-9
Page Count: 133
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2000
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