The desert is brought to life in a scenic novel with an important lesson about humility.
A survival story about a wounded boy who is lost and injured in the Arizona desert in 1872.
A twist on the usual captivity Western, the story of young Miguel Abrano begins with the usual Native American clichés. Raised on a horse ranch in Arizona, young Miguel is a devout Hispanic Catholic who dreams of becoming a priest. But when Miguel’s father takes in a foreign traveler and asks him to translate an old family story written in a secret code, his well-laid plans fall apart. Shocked to learn that he and his family are secretly Sephardic Jews, Miguel rides angrily into the desert, where he is kidnapped by Apache warriors. Only after he escapes these men does he meet a kind Tohono O’odham boy named Rushing Cloud, who is escaping Indian boarding school and immediately agrees to help him. Per usual in the Western, the bad Natives are violent while the good Natives risk their own lives to educate the non-Native character and give him important spiritual lessons. The book’s saving grace is the twist: Young Miguel amends his judgmental Christian attitude after being inspired by Rushing Cloud. Miguel not only learns how to survive in the harsh desert—hunting, cooking, and tracking like an expert—he also learns to accept his complicated cultural inheritance.
The desert is brought to life in a scenic novel with an important lesson about humility. (afterword, glossary, bibliography) (Historical fiction. 8-14)Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5415-5722-2
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Kar-Ben
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Korman’s trademark humor makes this an appealing read.
Will a bully always be a bully?
That’s the question eighth-grade football captain Chase Ambrose has to answer for himself after a fall from his roof leaves him with no memory of who and what he was. When he returns to Hiawassee Middle School, everything and everyone is new. The football players can hardly wait for him to come back to lead the team. Two, Bear Bratsky and Aaron Hakimian, seem to be special friends, but he’s not sure what they share. Other classmates seem fearful; he doesn’t know why. Temporarily barred from football because of his concussion, he finds a new home in the video club and, over time, develops a new reputation. He shoots videos with former bullying target Brendan Espinoza and even with Shoshanna Weber, who’d hated him passionately for persecuting her twin brother, Joel. Chase voluntarily continues visiting the nursing home where he’d been ordered to do community service before his fall, making a special friend of a decorated Korean War veteran. As his memories slowly return and he begins to piece together his former life, he’s appalled. His crimes were worse than bullying. Will he become that kind of person again? Set in the present day and told in the alternating voices of Chase and several classmates, this finding-your-middle-school-identity story explores provocative territory. Aside from naming conventions, the book subscribes to the white default.
Korman’s trademark humor makes this an appealing read. (Fiction. 9-14)Pub Date: May 30, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-338-05377-7
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: March 19, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2017
Rich and strange (and kitted out with an eye-catching cover), but stronger in the set pieces than the internal logic.
Chainani works an elaborate sea change akin to Gregory Maguire’s Wicked (1995), though he leaves the waters muddied.
Every four years, two children, one regarded as particularly nice and the other particularly nasty, are snatched from the village of Gavaldon by the shadowy School Master to attend the divided titular school. Those who survive to graduate become major or minor characters in fairy tales. When it happens to sweet, Disney princess–like Sophie and her friend Agatha, plain of features, sour of disposition and low of self-esteem, they are both horrified to discover that they’ve been dropped not where they expect but at Evil and at Good respectively. Gradually—too gradually, as the author strings out hundreds of pages of Hogwarts-style pranks, classroom mishaps and competitions both academic and romantic—it becomes clear that the placement wasn’t a mistake at all. Growing into their true natures amid revelations and marked physical changes, the two spark escalating rivalry between the wings of the school. This leads up to a vicious climactic fight that sees Good and Evil repeatedly switching sides. At this point, readers are likely to feel suddenly left behind, as, thanks to summary deus ex machina resolutions, everything turns out swell(ish).
Rich and strange (and kitted out with an eye-catching cover), but stronger in the set pieces than the internal logic. (Fantasy. 11-13)Pub Date: May 14, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-06-210489-2
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Feb. 12, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2013
BOOK TO SCREEN
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