Lionel, a Blackfeet boy orphaned at three, has grown up with his older sister Beatrice at Chalk Bluff boarding school in the early 1900s. When Beatrice must defend herself against abuse, the two flee and seek their grandfather, spending a winter alone in the mountains. Crowley, a first-time novelist, is a practiced screenwriter and filmmaker, and he adeptly establishes setting and narrative arc but unfortunately relies on a Hollywood-esque portrayal of Indians. Orphaning Lionel at an early age allows the (inconsistent) third-person-limited perspective to be totally naïve of Blackfeet culture, but it's a crude device: “Lionel...definitely did not understand how [the old traditions] could possibly be worth the trouble they caused.” Grandfather saves them with laughable Indian boot-camp philosophy: “They’re powerful, ya know. Dreams. You should pay attention to them like ya pay attention to all that’s around you.” In the appended Q&A, the author indicates a desire to acknowledge the "resilience and adaptability" of the Blackfeet culture—but the “starfish” metaphor he uses for this purpose calls to mind a dead and hollow shell, which is how this depiction of the culture reads. (Historical fiction. 10-13)
Pub Date: Nov. 9, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-4231-2588-4
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Disney-Hyperion
Review Posted Online: Sept. 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2010
BOOK REVIEW
A winningly authentic, realistic and heartwarming family drama.
A family crisis pushes a 12-year-old wannabe cowboy living outside Chicago in 1953 to resort to bullying and damaging pranks.
Since his baby sister’s birth, Tommy’s normally moody mother’s been like a “sky full of dark clouds.” When his older sister’s seriously burned, Tommy’s left to cope with her daily newspaper route, his increasingly abusive mother, his overwhelmed father and his younger sisters. Tommy reacts by bullying classmates, especially a shy, overweight new boy at school named Sam. When he’s caught stealing from Sam’s father’s store, Tommy retaliates by planting a copy of a communist newspaper found during a community paper drive in the store. After the owner’s accused of being a communist and the store’s boycotted, Tommy realizes he’s acting like an outlaw instead of a cowboy, and he tries to find the real communist in the neighborhood, leading to surprising discoveries and the help his family desperately needs. Speaking in the first person, Tommy reveals himself as a good-hearted, responsible kid who’s temporarily lost his moral compass. Effective use of cowboy imagery allows Tommy to step up like his hero, Gary Cooper in High Noon, and do the right thing. Period detail and historical references effectively capture the anti-communist paranoia of the McCarthy era.
A winningly authentic, realistic and heartwarming family drama. (author’s note, photos) (Historical fiction. 10-13)Pub Date: Sept. 4, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-399-16328-9
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: July 28, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A splendidly exciting and accessible historical adventure.
Tory encounters the independence and adventure she longs for in the untamed city of San Francisco in 1849.
Thirteen-year-old narrator Victoria Blaisdell, known to her family as Tory, lives a comfortably privileged life in mid-19th-century Providence, Rhode Island. She is frustrated and constrained by the influence of her maternal aunt, Lavinia, who believes that girls are to take care of boys and should be educated only at home. But when Tory’s father loses his position and wages and decides to seek gold in California, Tory stows away on the ship that will take him and her fretful younger brother, Jacob, on the seven-month journey to San Francisco. There, Tory finds work to keep herself and Jacob going while their father heads off to the gold fields. When Jacob is kidnapped to be a cabin boy for a ship heading out of the Golden Gate, Tory must appeal to her new friend Thad from Maine and to Sam, a wary young black man from Sag Harbor, New York, to help her navigate an underworld of gambling, rogues, and abandoned ships. Sam and Señor Rosales, who runs the cafe near Tory and Jacob’s tent, are the only nonwhite principal characters. Tory is the only girl. Avi evokes Gold Rush–era San Francisco through Tory’s eyes with empathy and clarity while keeping the action lively.
A splendidly exciting and accessible historical adventure. (Historical fiction. 10-13)Pub Date: March 10, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5362-0679-1
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: Dec. 7, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2020
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