Unique language and characters turn a problem novel into romantic comedy in this tale of a molested Valley teenager and her sharp-tongued, pinky-sized companion. Groomed relentlessly for the role of beauty pageant queen, meek Barbie Marks makes a fierce wish, and meets a fairy named Mab; despite the gossamer wings and a “glimmersome twinkle,” Mab could eat Tinkerbelle for lunch. An irascible, challenging confidante, she is still around five years later when Barbie, a successful fashion model, meets Todd Range, a real “biscuit” in Mab’s approving estimation, made even more appealing by his meltingly vulnerable roommate Griffin Tyler. Time-honored complications ensue, but Barbie’s ultimate realization that Todd is The One gives her the courage to confront her domineering mother with the fact of her molestation by a photographer years before. Cut to Barbie (now Selena Moon, a new name to go with her newly independent spirit) and Todd in a cozy love nest, with Mab, having found a biscuit for Griffin, and even one for herself, bidding fond adieu. Block (Girl Goddess #9, 1996, etc.) conjures up some sympathy for Barbie’s mother, and even for the photographer, but lines between heroes and villains are deliberately drawn, and the book, with its live-wire sprite, is as bright and focused as anything she has written. (Fiction. 13-15)
Pub Date: Oct. 31, 1998
ISBN: 0-06-027747-5
Page Count: 188
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1998
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Namioka (Den of the White Fox, 1997, etc.) offers readers a glimpse of the ritual of foot-binding, and a surprising heroine whose life is determined by her rejection of that ritual. Ailin is spirited—her family thinks uncontrollable—even at age five, in her family’s compound in China in 1911, she doesn’t want to have her feet bound, especially after Second Sister shows Ailin her own bound feet and tells her how much it hurts. Ailin can see already how bound feet will restrict her movements, and prevent her from running and playing. Her father takes the revolutionary step of permitting her to leave her feet alone, even though the family of Ailin’s betrothed then breaks off the engagement. Ailin goes to the missionary school and learns English; when her father dies and her uncle cuts off funds for tuition, she leaves her family to become a nanny for an American missionary couple’s children. She learns all the daily household chores that were done by servants in her own home, and finds herself, painfully, cut off from her own culture and separate from the Americans. At 16, she decides to go with the missionaries when they return to San Francisco, where she meets and marries another Chinese immigrant who starts his own restaurant. The metaphor of things bound and unbound is a ribbon winding through this vivid narrative; the story moves swiftly, while Ailin is a brave and engaging heroine whose difficult choices reflect her time and her gender. (Fiction. 9-14)
Pub Date: May 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-385-32666-1
Page Count: 154
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 1999
A century before the events of Clare’s Mortal Instruments trilogy, another everyday heroine gets entangled with demon-slaying Shadowhunters. Sixteen-year-old orphaned Tessa comes to London to join her brother but is imprisoned by the grotesque Dark Sisters. The sisters train the unwilling Tessa in previously unknown shapeshifter abilities, preparing her to be a pawn in some diabolical plan. A timely rescue brings Tessa to the Institute, where a group of misfit Shadowhunters struggles to fight evil. Though details differ, the general flavor of Tessa’s new family will be enjoyably familiar to the earlier trilogy’s fans; the most important is Tessa’s rescuer Will, the gorgeous, sharp-tongued teenager with a mysterious past and a smile like “Lucifer might have smiled, moments before he fell from Heaven.” The lush, melodramatic urban fantasy setting of the Shadowhunter world morphs seamlessly into a steampunk Victorian past, and this new series provides the setup for what will surely be a climactic battle against hordes of demonically powered brass clockworks. The tale drags in places, but this crowdpleaser’s tension-filled conclusion ratchets toward a new set of mysteries. (Steampunk. 13-15)
Pub Date: Aug. 31, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-4169-7586-1
Page Count: 496
Publisher: McElderry
Review Posted Online: July 1, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2010
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