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SMILING FOR STRANGERS

Name: SMILING FOR STRANGERS
Author: Gaye Hicyilmaz
ISBN: 0-374-37081-8

by Gaye Hicyilmaz ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 24, 2000

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Exhibiting a shrewdness born from desperation, a fourteenyearold girl makes the hazardous journey from the wartorn countryside outside of Sarajevo to the safety of England. Knowing the war might soon force them to flee their rustic hideaway, Nina and her grandfather sleep on the back veranda with their bags packed. This part of the book is vividly rendered and crammed with extraordinary details that beautifully illuminate their daytoday struggle. For example, Nina's grandfather scatters objects along the path to their hideout so that visitors will make enough noise stumbling to alert them to possible danger. But, the story loses steam at its heart, when Nina has to escape the country, hoping for sanctuary from a friend of her now-deceased mother in Sussex, England. Her grandfather advises her to join an aid convoy that is being turned back, obtaining help by choosing a person whom she thinks `will say yes` to her plea for assistance, then asking that person nicely for help. Flashing `her most brilliant, grownup smile,` Nina is helped and hindered by various people with perplexing and ambiguous agendas. She finally makes it to Sussex and is taken in by her mother's friend, but the situation between them is rife with misunderstandings. It's impossible not to feel sympathy for this poor child who has been through so much, and Hicyilmaz (The Frozen Waterfall, 1994, pointer) renders her situation with a welcome complexity. Yet, the flesh and blood Nina remains emotionally out of reach, inhibiting the reader from making a true connection. (Historical fiction. 10-12)

Pub Date: April 24, 2000

ISBN: 0-374-37081-8

Page Count: 160

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2000

Categories:

TEENS & YOUNG ADULT FICTION

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DUSK

by Susan Gates ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 1, 2005

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Weak science fiction about two kids who may or may not be able to bond. Dusk, a feral girl bred with hawk genes who believes she can fly, lives in a cage in a secret military laboratory. During a fire, conflicted (and alcoholic) guard Curtis frees her and she’s on her own for the first time. She lives for two years in the nearby deserted town that was forcefully evacuated lest anyone discover her. She hunts there at dusk; wild rats hunt at night, dogs during the day. Curtis’s son Jay discovers Dusk while he’s in a bad state himself, obsessively traumatized by a beating from a peer. The narrative voice changes confusingly often—sometimes in the middle of a paragraph—between third-person omniscient and third-person limited (of Dusk, Jay, Curtis and a super intelligent rat trying to take over the world). The writing is choppy, riddled with minute but irritating inconsistencies. For better science fiction about kids with avian genes, see James Patterson’s Maximum Ride . (Science fiction. 10-12)

Pub Date: May 1, 2005

ISBN: 0-399-24343-7

Page Count: 176

Publisher: Putnam

Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2005

Categories:

TEENS & YOUNG ADULT FICTION | TEENS & YOUNG ADULT SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY

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MIDNIGHT RIDER

by Joan Hiatt Harlow ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2005

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On the eve of the first battles of the American Revolution (1774-75), orphaned Hannah Andrews’s cruel aunt, Phoebe, indentures the 14-year-old to General Thomas Gage, the British colonial governor in Boston. A spunky young woman, she has the talent of calming and riding horses thanks to a gift from her father of a steed that’s the only breathing creature she loves. Aunt Phoebe sells Promise, but to a neighbor who will play a large part in Hannah’s life. Because she’s a servant in Gage’s house, she overhears British plans and conveys them to the patriots in Boston, including Paul Revere. At the end of the story, she braves weather and rides the many miles to Salem to warn the town of a campaign to take the patriots’ munitions. What should be exciting history in this overlong narrative is harmed by weak characterization, expository information pedantically inserted into conversations, an improbable plot and an overall feeling of superficiality. (Historical fiction. 10-12)