The rock bands are right—“Love Hurts.” (resources) (Nonfiction anthology. 13-19)
Surrender your laptop, Ann Landers: 17 YA authors (and one intrepid spouse) are now writers-in-residence at the Heartbreak Hotel.
Humans could barely conjugate a verb when the poets and musicians among them began earning their keep explaining the damnable mystery of love, that emotion that slashes and burns its way through tender hearts. Demetrios (Bad Romance, 2017, etc.) asked teenagers to write letters to Heartbreak itself and gathered YA authors to address their anguish. The mostly female authors, representing a diverse variety of backgrounds, answered with cleareyed empathy. Each writer embraces one broken teen heart while responding with a masterful combination of painful honesty, gentle encouragement, and irreverent humor. Libba Bray (Before the Devil Breaks You, 2017, etc.) shares her own stories of physical disfigurement with a young woman who laments that her chronic disease renders her unlovable. Jasmine Warga (Here We Are Now, 2017, etc.) reminds a girl who is loved by someone her best friend has feelings for that love is not a competition. Kim Liggett (The Unfortunates, 2018, etc.) bares her soul and relives her own trauma to comfort a survivor of date rape. Whether it is unrequited love, love that has become abusive, or the misery of being ghosted, this collection reaffirms that love is worth living for, that we must love ourselves first, and that, thankfully, broken hearts do mend.
The rock bands are right—“Love Hurts.” (resources) (Nonfiction anthology. 13-19)Pub Date: Dec. 18, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-250-17090-3
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Sept. 16, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2018
Skilled and graceful exploration of the soul of an astonishing human being.
Full-immersion journalist Kidder (Home Town, 1999, etc.) tries valiantly to keep up with a front-line, muddy-and-bloody general in the war against infectious disease in Haiti and elsewhere.
The author occasionally confesses to weariness in this gripping account—and why not? Paul Farmer, who has an M.D. and a Ph.D. from Harvard, appears to be almost preternaturally intelligent, productive, energetic, and devoted to his causes. So trotting alongside him up Haitian hills, through international airports and Siberian prisons and Cuban clinics, may be beyond the capacity of a mere mortal. Kidder begins with a swift account of his first meeting with Farmer in Haiti while working on a story about American soldiers, then describes his initial visit to the doctor’s clinic, where the journalist felt he’d “encountered a miracle.” Employing guile, grit, grins, and gifts from generous donors (especially Boston contractor Tom White), Farmer has created an oasis in Haiti where TB and AIDS meet their Waterloos. The doctor has an astonishing rapport with his patients and often travels by foot for hours over difficult terrain to treat them in their dwellings (“houses” would be far too grand a word). Kidder pauses to fill in Farmer’s amazing biography: his childhood in an eccentric family sounds like something from The Mosquito Coast; a love affair with Roald Dahl’s daughter ended amicably; his marriage to a Haitian anthropologist produced a daughter whom he sees infrequently thanks to his frenetic schedule. While studying at Duke and Harvard, Kidder writes, Farmer became obsessed with public health issues; even before he’d finished his degrees he was spending much of his time in Haiti establishing the clinic that would give him both immense personal satisfaction and unsurpassed credibility in the medical worlds he hopes to influence.
Skilled and graceful exploration of the soul of an astonishing human being.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2003
ISBN: 0-375-50616-0
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2003
This is clearly not unbiased reporting, but it makes a strong case that justice in our legal system does not always fit the...
Porinchak recounts how the legal system fails five teens who commit a serious crime.
The May 22, 1995, brawl in a white suburb of Los Angeles that resulted in the death of one teen and the injury of another is related matter-of-factly. The account of the police investigation, the judicial process, and the ultimate incarceration of the five boys is more passionately argued. Since the story focuses on the teens’ experiences following the brawl, minimal attention is given to Jimmy Farris, who died, although the testimony of Mike McLoren, who survived, is crucial. The book opens with a comprehensive dramatis personae that will help orient readers, and the text is liberally punctuated by quotes drawn from contemporary newspaper and magazine coverage as well as interviews with several of the key figures, including three of the accused. Porinchak argues that the proceedings were influenced by the high-profile 1994 trial and acquittal of the Menendez brothers, and unfounded accusations of gang involvement further clouded the matter. Despite the journalistic style, there is clear intent to elicit sympathy for the five boys involved, three of whom were sentenced to life without parole; of two, the text remarks that “they were numbers now, not humans.”
This is clearly not unbiased reporting, but it makes a strong case that justice in our legal system does not always fit the crime. (Nonfiction. 14-18)Pub Date: May 2, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-4814-8132-8
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Simon Pulse/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: March 28, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2017
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