A fictionalized memoir of a young girl’s romance with an exotic Indian Prince while seeking a cure for her tuberculosis in a sanitarium in 1946. The heroine, April, is a gorgeous California girl living in San Francisco and used to swimming on the swim team and in the ocean. She receives flowers as her due, sex is limited to kisses and embraces, and the culture clash is nonexistent. Based largely on the author’s experience, the daily details of life in the hospital are vivid and have a substance that the characters do not. Ravi, the prince, is not homesick enough to convey any sense of the place he’s left behind, and April’s roommates seem like stock characters, not real people facing death. Occasionally, there are glimpses behind the rosy hue that colors the narrative, such as a dinner with Ravi and his father that ends abruptly, a few references to a mother in a psychiatric hospital for her depression, and a sneaky visit to a crematorium where April is shut into the cold furnace. The seriousness of tuberculosis and the likelihood of death for all the patients are gradually understood, but never overshadow the light romance. Mostly the young men admire and court April who languishes in bedrest with little to occupy her mind. There is equally little here to occupy the readers, but for romance lovers there is a certain charm in the unique setting. (Fiction. 10-14)
Pub Date: June 12, 2001
ISBN: 0-385-32779-X
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2001
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
PROFILES
An outstanding new edition of this popular modern classic (Newbery Award, 1961), with an introduction by Zena Sutherland and...
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1990
ISBN: 0-395-53680-4
Page Count: -
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2000
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