Over-the-top fun for readers who can overlook the implausibilities.
It’s 1961 in Cullman, Alabama, and Johnny Cannon has more troubles than any “almost-thirteen-year-old” ought to have.
Johnny is living an extraordinary life for an Alabama country boy. He’s good at hunting, though not so good at school, and he’s an engaging raconteur. In this overstuffed debut, Johnny is friends with African-American preacher’s kid Willie Parkins and actually pitches for Willie’s otherwise all-black baseball team, risking the attention of the Ku Klux Klan. Johnny also accidentally cuts off Martha Macker’s ponytail, pursues a lame moneymaking scheme that ignites racial strife, almost perishes in a tornado and wrecks his father’s truck. And that’s only the first part of Johnny’s saga. When his father builds a military-style radio station in their shed—it turns out he’s involved in the Bay of Pigs invasion—the story becomes a series of madcap and increasingly implausible events (think Dead End in Norvelt on steroids). He encounters Che Guevara and Fidel Castro, pilots an airplane to make an escape, confronts the Klan, lies to a CIA agent and launches himself like Superman off of his roof. Less would have been more here, as Johnny and Willie are well-drawn characters to care about, and Cullman’s a large-enough world for them to live out their stories.
Over-the-top fun for readers who can overlook the implausibilities. (Historical action. 9-14)Pub Date: Oct. 14, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4814-0003-9
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: July 15, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Riveting, inspiring, and sometimes hilarious.
If you made a recording to be heard by the aliens who found the iPod, what would you record?
For 11-year-old Alex Petroski, it's easy. He records everything. He records the story of how he travels to New Mexico to a rocket festival with his dog, Carl Sagan, and his rocket. He records finding out that a man with the same name and birthday as his dead father has an address in Las Vegas. He records eating at Johnny Rockets for the first time with his new friends, who are giving him a ride to find his dead father (who might not be dead!), and losing Carl Sagan in the wilds of Las Vegas, and discovering he has a half sister. He even records his own awful accident. Cheng delivers a sweet, soulful debut novel with a brilliant, refreshing structure. His characters manage to come alive through the “transcript” of Alex’s iPod recording, an odd medium that sounds like it would be confusing but really works. Taking inspiration from the Voyager Golden Record released to space in 1977, Alex, who explains he has “light brown skin,” records all the important moments of a journey that takes him from a family of two to a family of plenty.
Riveting, inspiring, and sometimes hilarious. (Fiction. 10-14)Pub Date: Feb. 28, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-399-18637-0
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: Oct. 18, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
A captivating book situated in present-day discourse around the refugee crisis, featuring two boys who stand by their high...
Two parallel stories, one of a Syrian boy from Aleppo fleeing war, and another of a white American boy, son of a NATO contractor, dealing with the challenges of growing up, intersect at a house in Brussels.
Ahmed lost his father while crossing the Mediterranean. Alone and broke in Europe, he takes things into his own hands to get to safety but ends up having to hide in the basement of a residential house. After months of hiding, he is discovered by Max, a boy of similar age and parallel high integrity and courage, who is experiencing his own set of troubles learning a new language, moving to a new country, and being teased at school. In an unexpected turn of events, the two boys and their new friends Farah, a Muslim Belgian girl, and Oscar, a white Belgian boy, successfully scheme for Ahmed to go to school while he remains in hiding the rest of the time. What is at stake for Ahmed is immense, and so is the risk to everyone involved. Marsh invites art and history to motivate her protagonists, drawing parallels to gentiles who protected Jews fleeing Nazi terror and citing present-day political news. This well-crafted and suspenseful novel touches on the topics of refugees and immigrant integration, terrorism, Islam, Islamophobia, and the Syrian war with sensitivity and grace.
A captivating book situated in present-day discourse around the refugee crisis, featuring two boys who stand by their high values in the face of grave risk and succeed in drawing goodwill from others. (Historical fiction. 10-14)Pub Date: Aug. 7, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-250-30757-6
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Roaring Brook Press
Review Posted Online: June 10, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2018
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