Still, readers will enjoy this trip through time in a notable new transracial-adoption narrative.
Twelve-year-old Imani, a black girl adopted into a white Jewish family, struggles to negotiate her understanding of identity and place while also untangling the skein of her great-grandma’s legacy.
Imani’s journey to find her origins leads her to seek resolution and guidance in Great-Grandma Anna’s diary, which details her flight from Luxembourg to escape Nazi occupation. Along the way, Imani faces awkward, heart-wrenching confrontations with a mother not ready to answer questions about her adoption and about the challenges of being 12, almost 13, while on the outside of insider knowledge about both her birth and adoptive families. Cybils Award winner Weissman (Nerd Camp, 2011) creates a narrative strengthened by her smooth temporal transitions between 1940 and 2014 and her fresh descriptions of life in New York during the early 1940s, including the experiences of Jews in America during the Holocaust. However, Weissman’s too-brief inclusion of African-American traditions and the few pointed situations in which Imani is quizzed or fetishized don’t give readers the opportunity to explore Imani’s thoughts about being a black girl in majority-white spaces. Imani’s preoccupation is with finding her biological parentage, a journey connected to but not the same as examining her racial identity; this gives references to her racial identity a superficial feel.
Still, readers will enjoy this trip through time in a notable new transracial-adoption narrative. (Fiction. 10-14)Pub Date: May 1, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-7352-2947-1
Page Count: 386
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: May 13, 2018
A beautifully executed victory lap for a beloved series.
An origin story for the man who provides wisdom and a sense of cohesion for the young runners who star in Reynolds’ celebrated series.
Years before Coach guided the members of the Defenders through hurdles on and off the field, he was a 12-year-old boy known as Otie. Otie’s a gifted runner, though impulsive (as his mother says, “Your body’s fast, but your mind don’t always move at the same speed”), and he’s thrilled to learn that the scout who helped his idol, Carl Lewis, make it to the 1984 Olympics four years ago will be arriving soon to assess the talent on his team. His loving parents encourage him—and do their best to keep him away from the influence of the Clippers, a gang that sells drugs in his predominantly Black neighborhood. When his father, who’s frequently away for work, returns with a gift of Jordans, Otie is even more excited, but the cherished sneakers serve as the catalyst for learning difficult truths about his father. Reynolds does a remarkable job of using pop culture references—from Michael Jackson to Back to the Future—to establish a sense of time and place. As always, his command of language is masterly, with crackling dialogue, propulsive plotting, and adroit characterization: Readers will emerge with a rich portrait of the forces that created the man whose mentorship would have a powerful effect on so many young people.
A beautifully executed victory lap for a beloved series. (Historical fiction. 10-14)Pub Date: Oct. 14, 2025
ISBN: 9798347102372
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Caitlyn Dlouhy/Atheneum
Review Posted Online: Oct. 10, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
Poignant, respectful, and historically accurate while pulsating with emotional turmoil, adventure, and suspense.
In the midst of political turmoil, how do you escape the only country that you’ve ever known and navigate a new life? Parallel stories of three different middle school–aged refugees—Josef from Nazi Germany in 1938, Isabel from 1994 Cuba, and Mahmoud from 2015 Aleppo—eventually intertwine for maximum impact.
Three countries, three time periods, three brave protagonists. Yet these three refugee odysseys have so much in common. Each traverses a landscape ruled by a dictator and must balance freedom, family, and responsibility. Each initially leaves by boat, struggles between visibility and invisibility, copes with repeated obstacles and heart-wrenching loss, and gains resilience in the process. Each third-person narrative offers an accessible look at migration under duress, in which the behavior of familiar adults changes unpredictably, strangers exploit the vulnerabilities of transients, and circumstances seem driven by random luck. Mahmoud eventually concludes that visibility is best: “See us….Hear us. Help us.” With this book, Gratz accomplishes a feat that is nothing short of brilliant, offering a skillfully wrought narrative laced with global and intergenerational reverberations that signal hope for the future. Excellent for older middle grade and above in classrooms, book groups, and/or communities looking to increase empathy for new and existing arrivals from afar.
Poignant, respectful, and historically accurate while pulsating with emotional turmoil, adventure, and suspense. (maps, author’s note) (Historical fiction. 10-14)Pub Date: July 25, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-545-88083-1
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: May 9, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2017
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