Miklowitz (Past Forgiving, 1995, etc.), manipulating aspects of current events into a unclouded message, sends a Los Angeles teenager out of the frying pan and into the fire: He escapes his mother, whom he finds unreasonable and demanding, by moving in with his admired father, who turns out to be the leader of an underground militia. With the prospect of learning how to drive, shoot, perhaps even ride his father’s horse, Kyle’s summer in Michigan looks bright. An initial meeting with a local boy, Hiram, a 16-year-old buzz-cut bigot, and his unsavory friends takes some of the shine off, but all Kyle’s pleasure turns to alarm as he discovers that the house has been searched, sees the inventory of his father Ed’s “gun club,” and hears his anti-government talk. The club is on the march when the IRS seizes a neighbor’s farm for back taxes; in the armed confrontation, Hiram is killed. Kyle watches fearfully as Ed vengefully plants a van full of explosives beneath a federal building in Lansing, and, wrestling down his stubborn loyalty, escapes and blows the whistle. When the bomb goes off, the building has been partially evacuated, but the book trails off as the numbers of dead (53) and injured (119) are tallied. Several questions are unanswered, such as who shot Hiram, and the identity of the mysterious prowlers; still, along with the moderately suspenseful plot, Miklowitz creates a realistic conflict in Kyle between his hero worship and his emerging sense of right and wrong. (Fiction. 11-13)
Pub Date: March 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-15-201467-5
Page Count: 166
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1998
BOOK REVIEW
Characteristically provocative gothic comedy, with sublime undertones. (Autobiographical fiction. 11-13)
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Who can't love a story about a Nigerian-American 12-year-old with albinism who discovers latent magical abilities and saves the world? Sunny lives in Nigeria after spending the first nine years of her life in New York. She can't play soccer with the boys because, as she says, "being albino made the sun my enemy," and she has only enemies at school. When a boy in her class, Orlu, rescues her from a beating, Sunny is drawn in to a magical world she's never known existed. Sunny, it seems, is a Leopard person, one of the magical folk who live in a world mostly populated by ignorant Lambs. Now she spends the day in mundane Lamb school and sneaks out at night to learn magic with her cadre of Leopard friends: a handsome American bad boy, an arrogant girl who is Orlu’s childhood friend and Orlu himself. Though Sunny's initiative is thin—she is pushed into most of her choices by her friends and by Leopard adults—the worldbuilding for Leopard society is stellar, packed with details that will enthrall readers bored with the same old magical worlds. Meanwhile, those looking for a touch of the familiar will find it in Sunny's biggest victories, which are entirely non-magical (the detailed dynamism of Sunny's soccer match is more thrilling than her magical world saving). Ebulliently original. (Fantasy. 11-13)
Pub Date: April 14, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-670-01196-4
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: March 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2011
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