Heartfelt but inconsistent.
Eliza Marino’s family, lifelong residents of New Jersey’s Long Beach Island, lost nearly everything in a devastating hurricane.
Five years later, she and her friends are on a mission to preserve their coastal marshland as a habitat for turtles and other wildlife. A lifeguard and talented surfer, Eliza, 17, remains traumatized by the storm that nearly killed her little brother. She and her friends resent the seasonal residents whose oceanfront mansions replaced the modest homes that were destroyed. Ensuring the marshland is preserved is challenging, however. Spontaneously venting their frustration, the teens vandalize a giant home under construction. For Eliza, teaching Milo Harris, a handsome, wealthy, vacationing New Yorker, to surf proves a happy distraction. However, each keeps secrets that threaten their fledgling romance. Despite one character’s referencing Indigenous activists, the text does not consider the Indigenous people displaced by the islanders’ ancestors. Eliza’s dad works in construction, and the cafe her mom co-owns depends on tourists. Such conflicts, though depicted, aren’t explored in depth and are primarily framed in an interpersonal context. The novel’s strengths are Eliza’s compelling voice—her hurricane flashbacks are mesmerizing—and the conveying of emotion; it only lightly explores the theme of youth climate change activism and issues connected to it. Most characters read as White; several secondary characters are Latinx, and one is nonbinary.
Heartfelt but inconsistent. (author’s note, resources) (Verse novel. 12-18)Pub Date: July 19, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-5476-0916-1
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: April 26, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2022
An incredible story, told with respect and love, this deserves a wide readership. Just have the tissue box handy.
The Holocaust: a time of unimaginable horror, with moments of incandescence.
Following her picture book with Josée Bisaillon, Benno and the Night of Broken Glass (2010), Wiviott’s debut for teens, a novel in (largely excellent) verse, tells the fictionalized but carefully researched story surrounding one of those incandescent moments. In Auschwitz-Birkenau, Zlatka and Fania, Polish, Jewish, and determined to survive, become friends and replacement sisters. In each other, and in their small group of friends, they find strength. The titular heart is a tiny thing: a folded and stitched card penciled with birthday wishes that Zlatka creates for Fania for her 20th birthday, two years after she was captured trying to pass as Aryan. It is also a massive act of rebellion for every girl involved. It is, in the end, “A reason to take risks. / A reason to keep living.” If the heart were not an actual artifact (on display in Montreal), its metaphoric aptness might seem schmaltzy, but it is real, as are the transcribed wishes interspersed among the poems. Even in the darkness, light and love can survive, as Wiviott makes abundantly clear by picking a single thread from the millions of stories that occurred and stitching in context and facts to make both the larger horror and the smaller grace shine through.
An incredible story, told with respect and love, this deserves a wide readership. Just have the tissue box handy. (glossary, historical note, bibliography) (Historical fiction/verse. 12 & up)Pub Date: Oct. 13, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4814-3983-1
Page Count: 368
Publisher: McElderry
Review Posted Online: July 26, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
A love story that goes nowhere.
A novel in verse loosely based on a Russian classic and transported to contemporary Paris.
Eugene and Tatiana first met as teens, thrown together in the suburbs when 17-year-old Eugene accompanied his friend Lensky on visits to Lensky’s girlfriend, Olga. To Tatiana, Olga’s 14-year-old sister, Eugene is charming and the perfect crush. Eugene, however, is apathetic and bored by life, uncaring about whom he might hurt by his actions, even after a tragic accident ends Lensky’s life. Ten years later, when he encounters Tatiana, an art history scholar, Eugene has a “gray man's soul”: “He was used to his hope feeling numb, / used to hoping for nothing in particular.” Now, as an adult, Eugene sees Tatiana as the solution to his listless, colorless life, his interest in her becoming an unchecked obsession. With the potential for a successful career and a move to the United States ahead of her, Tatiana isn’t so sure a romance between herself and Eugene will last—not with his words after her teenage confession of love still ringing in her ears. Based on Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin, the plot easily translates into a modern setting. Yet the complex structure—free verse originally published in French—becomes stilted, the flow frequently disrupted by asides from the omniscient narrator. Despite Paris’ diversity, all characters appear to be white.
A love story that goes nowhere. (Verse novel. 14-adult)Pub Date: Jan. 8, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-29916-1
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Wednesday Books
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2018
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