The pivotal moment this Jamaican import describes deserves a more artful vehicle for the telling.
A historical novel examines racial tensions in mid-20th-century Bermuda.
Desma Johnson is a black Bermudian girl who is a week away from her 16th birthday. Growing up in a segregated Bermuda in 1959, she’s a brilliant scholar, having earned the Empire Scholarship, beating out many other “coloured” and white students in the Commonwealth. Her father’s gift to her was to be his treating her entire class to the movies. But this is where Desma’s troubles begin. Rumors of a boycott on the island begin circulating. The Progressive Group, said to be initiators of the boycott, seeks to end racial segregation in Bermuda, and they plan to do so by boycotting the movie theaters. Desma is upset by this development, but as the anxieties around the boycott build, she becomes aware of the racial tensions that she had previously been sheltered from in her paradise home of Bermuda. She comes to see a new, less favorable side of neighbors who were once friendly and supportive and realizes the harshness of the shadow that racial divisions cast over the island. In frequently expository prose, Maxwell tells a simple tale of a moment in a country’s history that is often erased. One-dimensional characters, jerky dialogue, and an awkward and excessive use of metaphors often take away from the significance of the revolution that should be at the center of this story.
The pivotal moment this Jamaican import describes deserves a more artful vehicle for the telling. (Historical fiction. 12-16)Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2017
ISBN: 978-976-8267-08-5
Page Count: 190
Publisher: Blouse & Skirt Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2017
This potentially inspiring tale staggers along under the weight of a worthy agenda.
A general indictment of apartheid is thinly wrapped in a tale about a young Zulu marathoner who runs for his country in the Olympics.
When police fire into a crowd watching a peaceful demonstration, they orphan young Samuel and his two older brothers, radicalizing the latter. In later years one brother loses his mind on Robben Island, and the other is killed in a gun battle. Samuel, though, grows up to leverage his love of running barefoot over his dusty tribal “homeland” into a spot on South Africa’s Olympics team after apartheid collapses and Mandela is freed. Riordan loosely bases his disconnected main plot on the experiences of Josiah Thugwane, the first black gold medalist from South Africa. He begins his book with the graphically depicted opening massacre, closely followed by a disturbingly gruesome hospital scene. To these he adds angry rhetoric (“Where was British justice now?”) and ugly words when Samuel goes to get a passbook and later boards a “Whites Only” train car by mistake. For readers who still aren't with the program, he provides infodumps about South Africa’s racial history and the African National Congress and a triumphant set piece when Samuel casts a vote in his first national election. Samuel runs (and wins) the climactic race with a letter from Mandela tucked in his shoe.
This potentially inspiring tale staggers along under the weight of a worthy agenda. (afterword) (Historical fiction. 12-14)Pub Date: May 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-84507-934-5
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Frances Lincoln
Review Posted Online: March 13, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2012
Though the footnotes feel gimmicky and distracting, readers will likely be able to look past them (or just skip over them)...
Cleverly woven through the titular encyclopedia—with entries as seemingly mundane as “Apple” and “Oxen”—is the touchingly real and often humorous story of a preteen’s struggles with family, friendship and first love.
Isadora “Tink” Aaron-Martin, nearly 13, means to make the most of her recent grounding by using her time on house arrest to write an encyclopedia, heavily annotated with footnotes. Frustrated by her reputation as the peacemaker, Tink’s entries about life with an autistic brother are fresh and painfully honest. Rivers doesn’t tiptoe around the destructive impact the syndrome can have on a family. Rather, through Tink, she explores what it’s like to grow up in a house where everyone is constantly walking on eggshells, waiting for the next violent outburst. But family isn’t the only place where Tink feels invisible. She also walks in the shadow of her “best friend,” Freddie Blue Anderson, who seems to care more about being “pops” (popular) than about Tink. It isn’t until a blue-haired skateboarder named Kai moves in next door that she gradually finds the strength to put herself first, both at home and at school.
Though the footnotes feel gimmicky and distracting, readers will likely be able to look past them (or just skip over them) and cheer for Tink as she comes into her own. (Fiction. 12-14)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-545-31028-4
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Levine/Scholastic
Review Posted Online: July 17, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2012
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