This worthy tale is definitely agenda-driven, but the cultural and historical information is laid onto the story with a...
A traditional game provides a way for a Mississippi Choctaw teen to step out of the shadows of his sports-hero older brother and dad.
It’s been a year since the death of big brother Jack in Iraq, and Randy is entering Choctaw Central High under heavy pressure from his angry, grieving father to follow family tradition by signing up for football, baseball or some other “American” sport. But Randy has neither interest in nor aptitude for athletics…until he picks up a pair of playing sticks (kapoca) at a community center and discovers that he’s such a natural at the lacrosselike Choctaw game of toli that soon he’s invited by the coach to join an adult team playing in the World Series of Stickball at the upcoming Choctaw Fair. Tellingly, not only is that sport not played at Choctaw Central, but Randy’s father rejects his son’s choice, insisting that those outdated traditional pursuits have no place in the modern world. Though there is some feeling here for the game’s rough play, Robinson, himself of Cherokee and Choctaw descent, focuses more on the clash of values than on-field sports action. Ultimately, the author injects his protagonist with jolts of self-confidence as well as real interest in his culture on the way to bringing both Randy’s school and his father around to a more inclusive attitude.
This worthy tale is definitely agenda-driven, but the cultural and historical information is laid onto the story with a light hand. (author’s note) (Fiction. 10-13)Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-939053-02-2
Page Count: 120
Publisher: 7th Generation
Review Posted Online: June 7, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2013
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If it were a Golden Age comic, this tale of ridiculous science, space dogs and humanoid aliens with flashlights in their hands might not be bad. Alas... Number Four is a fugitive from the planet Lorien, which is sloppily described as both "hundreds of lightyears away" and "billions of miles away." Along with eight other children and their caretakers, Number Four escaped from the Mogadorian invasion of Lorien ten years ago. Now the nine children are scattered on Earth, hiding. Luckily and fairly nonsensically, the planet's Elders cast a charm on them so they could only be killed in numerical order, but children one through three are dead, and Number Four is next. Too bad he's finally gained a friend and a girlfriend and doesn't want to run. At least his newly developing alien powers means there will be screen-ready combat and explosions. Perhaps most idiotic, "author" Pittacus Lore is a character in this fiction—but the first-person narrator is someone else entirely. Maybe this is a natural extension of lightly hidden actual author James Frey's drive to fictionalize his life, but literature it ain't. (Science fiction. 11-13)
Pub Date: Aug. 17, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-06-196955-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2010
Characteristically provocative gothic comedy, with sublime undertones.
An exhilarating summer marked by death, gore and fire sparks deep thoughts in a small-town lad not uncoincidentally named “Jack Gantos.”
The gore is all Jack’s, which to his continuing embarrassment “would spray out of my nose holes like dragon flames” whenever anything exciting or upsetting happens. And that would be on every other page, seemingly, as even though Jack’s feuding parents unite to ground him for the summer after several mishaps, he does get out. He mixes with the undertaker’s daughter, a band of Hell’s Angels out to exact fiery revenge for a member flattened in town by a truck and, especially, with arthritic neighbor Miss Volker, for whom he furnishes the “hired hands” that transcribe what becomes a series of impassioned obituaries for the local paper as elderly town residents suddenly begin passing on in rapid succession. Eventually the unusual body count draws the—justified, as it turns out—attention of the police. Ultimately, the obits and the many Landmark Books that Jack reads (this is 1962) in his hours of confinement all combine in his head to broaden his perspective about both history in general and the slow decline his own town is experiencing.
Characteristically provocative gothic comedy, with sublime undertones. (Autobiographical fiction. 11-13)Pub Date: Sept. 13, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-374-37993-3
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: April 5, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2011
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BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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