Maggie Chen, 16, an intern at a Seattle newspaper who is grieving her journalist father’s recent death, is shocked to discover that he fabricated his family history. A smart, ambitious journalist in the making, Maggie sets out to discover why he lied, what happened to his—and her—real family and a possible link between his death and the government corruption case her newspaper is investigating. Interwoven with Maggie’s engaging narrative is the story of Chinese twins Fai-yi and Sucheng Li. In a flashback to 1932, Fai-yi recalls how they entered the United States using a “paper father,” a ruse to circumvent draconian laws prohibiting Chinese immigration. As the narratives merge, however, readers learn that responsibility for decades of loss and family alienation lies not with those events—Chinese poverty prompting mass emigration, brutal immigration laws harshly applied—but with one irredeemably evil character. Because evil is ahistorical, a cause rather than an effect, this motivation trivializes the novel’s context, rendering it largely irrelevant. Lacking ties to character motivation and choices, even the accurate historical detail rendered here is reduced to cultural wallpaper. (Historical fiction. 12 & up)
Pub Date: April 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-15-205507-3
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: Jan. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2010
Categories: TEEN FICTION | TEEN FAMILY
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Riveting, brutal and beautifully told.
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A devastating tale of greed and secrets springs from the summer that tore Cady’s life apart.
Cady Sinclair’s family uses its inherited wealth to ensure that each successive generation is blond, beautiful and powerful. Reunited each summer by the family patriarch on his private island, his three adult daughters and various grandchildren lead charmed, fairy-tale lives (an idea reinforced by the periodic inclusions of Cady’s reworkings of fairy tales to tell the Sinclair family story). But this is no sanitized, modern Disney fairy tale; this is Cinderella with her stepsisters’ slashed heels in bloody glass slippers. Cady’s fairy-tale retellings are dark, as is the personal tragedy that has led to her examination of the skeletons in the Sinclair castle’s closets; its rent turns out to be extracted in personal sacrifices. Brilliantly, Lockhart resists simply crucifying the Sinclairs, which might make the family’s foreshadowed tragedy predictable or even satisfying. Instead, she humanizes them (and their painful contradictions) by including nostalgic images that showcase the love shared among Cady, her two cousins closest in age, and Gat, the Heathcliff-esque figure she has always loved. Though increasingly disenchanted with the Sinclair legacy of self-absorption, the four believe family redemption is possible—if they have the courage to act. Their sincere hopes and foolish naïveté make the teens’ desperate, grand gesture all that much more tragic.
Riveting, brutal and beautifully told. (Fiction. 14 & up)Pub Date: May 13, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-385-74126-2
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: March 17, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2014
Categories: TEEN FAMILY | TEEN SOCIAL THEMES
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PROFILES
This story is necessary. This story is important.
17
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Sixteen-year-old Starr Carter is a black girl and an expert at navigating the two worlds she exists in: one at Garden Heights, her black neighborhood, and the other at Williamson Prep, her suburban, mostly white high school.
Walking the line between the two becomes immensely harder when Starr is present at the fatal shooting of her childhood best friend, Khalil, by a white police officer. Khalil was unarmed. Khalil’s death becomes national news, where he’s called a thug and possible drug dealer and gangbanger. His death becomes justified in the eyes of many, including one of Starr’s best friends at school. The police’s lackadaisical attitude sparks anger and then protests in the community, turning it into a war zone. Questions remain about what happened in the moments leading to Khalil’s death, and the only witness is Starr, who must now decide what to say or do, if anything. Thomas cuts to the heart of the matter for Starr and for so many like her, laying bare the systemic racism that undergirds her world, and she does so honestly and inescapably, balancing heartbreak and humor. With smooth but powerful prose delivered in Starr’s natural, emphatic voice, finely nuanced characters, and intricate and realistic relationship dynamics, this novel will have readers rooting for Starr and opening their hearts to her friends and family.
This story is necessary. This story is important. (Fiction. 14-adult)Pub Date: Feb. 28, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-06-249853-3
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Balzer + Bray/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Dec. 6, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2016
Categories: TEEN FICTION | TEEN SOCIAL THEMES
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