Well-crafted and emotionally compelling, with a somewhat regrettable setup.
A white American boy living in Japan faces serious bullying.
Jason’s family moved to Japan three years ago. Kamakura is an “out-of-the-way / seaside neighborhood / where hardly anyone / isn’t Japanese,” and Jason’s “the nail / that sticks out / just waiting / to be hammered down.” In school, he’s matched with five unfriendly classmates to sit, study, and do school chores with for the next two months. They taunt, punch, and kick him, even whacking him with a broom handle, ostensibly for getting a word wrong or having an accent. The text subtly yet steadily ratchets up suspense by using line breaks and spacing instead of periods; the free verse hums with a sense of impending danger. Is it the bullies that threaten or something natural, like a coastal typhoon? At the crisis moment, Jason’s sharp-as-a-tack younger sister leaps in to help, creating a satisfying culmination of their unidealized but deep and companionable relationship. It’s unfortunate that Thompson once again (The Language Inside, 2013) chooses a white protagonist’s viewpoint on Japan and that she doesn’t provide him Japanese peers who are as strong as the bullies; there are certainly kind Japanese characters here, but they’re mostly adults, leaving an impression of two bullied and heroic white American siblings amid hostile Japanese kids.
Well-crafted and emotionally compelling, with a somewhat regrettable setup. (glossary, cultural guide, resources) (Verse fiction. 10-13)Pub Date: April 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-62779-134-2
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2016
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
