A welcomingly awkward, offbeat journey for a “gay-girl gay” girl with many heartaches.
When everything’s awful inside and out, how can you take the bull by the horns?
Angie’s girlfriend has moved away. Angie’s war-hero sister was killed by terrorists in Iraq (Fat Angie, 2013, etc.), and glossy local and national tributes leave Angie alone and confused in her grief. Angie’s mother mourns “the good one” of her children, restricts Angie’s food, and threatens Angie with gay conversion therapy. When Angie breaks a bully’s nose in self-defense, witnesses lie and Angie faces legal prosecution. Depression, anxiety, panic, betrayal—how can Angie get out from under? A road trip—emotionally messy and awkward, with an ex-friend who ghosted her, one of the lying witnesses, and someone who films everything. With legal prosecution and conversion therapy looming, Angie stumbles her way through a road trip itinerary left by her dead sister. Charlton-Trujillo’s mildly unorthodox prose style features extra hyphens (“surprising-not-surprising,” “loud-loud,” Angie’s “couldn’t-understand mother”). While less funny than Fat Angie, this has hilarious moments: If a sign says, “DO NOT FLUSH / FEMININE FEMALE PRODUCTS,” could you flush a “butch tampon”? Angie’s white; her fellow RV-ers are a racially diverse group. Fortunately and refreshingly, the text gives Angie no weight-loss arc; unfortunately, the use of fatness as a misery symbol throughout dilutes the explicit self-acceptance ending.
A welcomingly awkward, offbeat journey for a “gay-girl gay” girl with many heartaches. (Fiction. 12-16)Pub Date: March 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-7636-9345-9
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: Dec. 8, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2019
A proficient caper spiced up by Violet's eye for art
A van Gogh heist, a trip to Japan and a yakuza attack: Could there be a better summer?
Violet's an otaku—a comics-loving Japanophile, derided as a "Manga-loid" by her school's mean girls—who draws her own manga and makes scarves out of vintage kimonos. Her dreadful summer plans (working at the comic-book store) are delightfully derailed when she has to join her estranged artist father in Tokyo, where he's been commissioned to paint a mural. But what's this? Her father's employers have been relieved of three van Gogh drawings, and Violet knows just the suspicious characters who might be guilty! The plucky detective investigates in both Seattle and Tokyo, following suspects around town in a tangled blonde wig and deciphering codes incorporated in both art and kanji. Soon the mystery begins to resemble an episode of Violet's own manga, Kimono Girl, complete with dangerous yakuza (Japanese mobsters), blackmail letters and FBI stings. Eagle-eyed Violet's sleuthing is assisted by her keen love of art, from manga to van Gogh to ukiyo-e, Japanese woodblock prints.
A proficient caper spiced up by Violet's eye for art . (Fiction. 12-14)Pub Date: June 14, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-670-01332-6
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: April 17, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2012
This cracking good mixture of magic and place will leave readers eagerly awaiting the sequel
A mixed-race girl in Dust Bowl Kansas discovers her long-lost father isn't just a black man: He's a fairy.
Callie has been passing as white her whole life, helping her Mama in run-down Slow Run, Kan. But now it doesn't seem to matter that she keeps her "good skin" out of the sun and softens her "coarse" hair, because it seems everyone's left the dust-choked town. Even Mama is gone now, vanished in a preternatural dust storm that summoned a strange man who tells Callie secrets of her never-met father. Soon Callie's walking the dusty roads with Jack, a ragged white kid. If Callie's dad is a fairy, then the two young'uns will just have to go to fairyland to find him. Callie and Jack dodge fairy politics and dangers, from grasshopper people to enchanted food to magic movie theaters—but the conventional dangers are no less threatening. Plenty of run-of-the-mill humans in 1935 Kansas don't like black girls or beggars, hobos or outsiders. With a historical note and a Woody Guthrie soundtrack, this novel does a fine job of blending a splendidly grounded Dust Bowl setting with a paranormal adventure. It's really too bad that the cover art depicts a white girl with flyaway hair, rather than Callie as written, a mixed girl who stops passing as white halfway through the story. Callie learns to be open about herself but her own cover art doesn't.
This cracking good mixture of magic and place will leave readers eagerly awaiting the sequel . (Fantasy. 12-14)Pub Date: June 26, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-375-86938-9
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: March 27, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2012
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