by Janet McLaughlin ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 13, 2018
A work of fiction compassionately portrays an underrepresented disorder.
A novel explores the daily challenges a young girl with Tourette’s syndrome faces.
Twelve-year-old Isabella “Izzy” Palmer confronts more than the usual middle school social problems. Her goal: “I want to be like everybody else. I want to be normal.” But Izzy isn’t exactly normal. Her Tourette’s diagnosis means she needs to resist physical urges. She exhibits signs of obsessive-compulsive disorder and, most embarrassingly, emits loud grunts or other noises. The neurological disorder makes her stand out at school and provides ample fodder for teasing. Her loyal friend Abbie helps her to feel more natural, but every day is a struggle (“Tourette Syndrome is not easy on anyone. Not on the person who has it, their family, or their friends”). Given an opportunity to try out for the school softball team, Izzy decides to attempt what seems so easy for other students but proves quite daunting for her. She tries to control her behavior and not give in to the extreme fatigue caused as a side effect of her medications. Her friends and parents help her practice her skills, and Coach Grant makes an honest effort to understand what accommodations might help Izzy. But Izzy gets discouraged and wonders if she would have more energy and play better by skipping her meds. It only takes a couple weeks for the symptoms to worsen to an excessive degree. Izzy learns a hard lesson: She has to reconcile her lifestyle with her meds. But she finds that success is possible with patience and practice. In her empathetic novel “dedicated to all children who dare to be different,” McLaughlin’s (Fireworks, 2017, etc.) teaching background is evident in how realistically she depicts the complicated middle school social structure and Izzy’s parents’ ongoing struggle to deal with the needs of a complicated tween. But the depth of Izzy’s world is also the tale’s flaw because it speaks to the middle school audience as if it were an adult fiction title bordering on self-help. The writing will likely appeal more to parents than middle school students. Still, the book is a particularly useful tool for support groups.
A work of fiction compassionately portrays an underrepresented disorder.Pub Date: Sept. 13, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-9995773-2-5
Page Count: 178
Publisher: Absolute Love Publishing
Review Posted Online: Oct. 24, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by J.D. Salinger ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 15, 1951
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
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by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2006
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
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