by Jeanette S. Arakawa ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 16, 2017
These are experiences that need to be remembered, though Arakawa’s are not as compellingly related as other novels or...
A child of Japanese immigrants looks back on her World War II–era experiences in internment camps and afterward.
Changing names and inventing details to fill in the gaps between memories, Arakawa, in character as Shizuye, begins with her 1932 birth on a Murphy bed in San Francisco, takes her narrative through multiple moves that become forced ones in the wake of Pearl Harbor, then concludes with a temporary postwar settlement in Denver and final journey back to the West Coast. Despite the fictive fill, her account is spotty and episodic, more hindered than helped in its course by such details as painstaking descriptions of the route between one home and the local playground or tedious tallies of the comings and goings of briefly known schoolmates. As much a personal story as testament to a historical outrage, her recollections mingle references to domestic strife, pre-adolescent bed-wetting, and suicidal impulses following the internment with incidents of being jeered as a “Jap” on the way home from school, encounters with neighborhood “racial covenants,” and other manifestations of prejudice—not to mention repeated forcible removals to hastily constructed camps in California and, later, Arkansas. Occasional mentions of “Caucasian” visitors or a friend’s “dark skin” serve as reminders that most of the figures here are Asian or Asian-American.
These are experiences that need to be remembered, though Arakawa’s are not as compellingly related as other novels or personal accounts of the travesty. (afterword) (Historical fiction. 12-16)Pub Date: May 16, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-61172-036-5
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Stone Bridge Press
Review Posted Online: March 28, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2017
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by James Riordan ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 1, 2012
This potentially inspiring tale staggers along under the weight of a worthy agenda.
A general indictment of apartheid is thinly wrapped in a tale about a young Zulu marathoner who runs for his country in the Olympics.
When police fire into a crowd watching a peaceful demonstration, they orphan young Samuel and his two older brothers, radicalizing the latter. In later years one brother loses his mind on Robben Island, and the other is killed in a gun battle. Samuel, though, grows up to leverage his love of running barefoot over his dusty tribal “homeland” into a spot on South Africa’s Olympics team after apartheid collapses and Mandela is freed. Riordan loosely bases his disconnected main plot on the experiences of Josiah Thugwane, the first black gold medalist from South Africa. He begins his book with the graphically depicted opening massacre, closely followed by a disturbingly gruesome hospital scene. To these he adds angry rhetoric (“Where was British justice now?”) and ugly words when Samuel goes to get a passbook and later boards a “Whites Only” train car by mistake. For readers who still aren't with the program, he provides infodumps about South Africa’s racial history and the African National Congress and a triumphant set piece when Samuel casts a vote in his first national election. Samuel runs (and wins) the climactic race with a letter from Mandela tucked in his shoe.
This potentially inspiring tale staggers along under the weight of a worthy agenda. (afterword) (Historical fiction. 12-14)Pub Date: May 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-84507-934-5
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Frances Lincoln
Review Posted Online: March 13, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2012
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by Karen Rivers ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 1, 2012
Though the footnotes feel gimmicky and distracting, readers will likely be able to look past them (or just skip over them)...
Cleverly woven through the titular encyclopedia—with entries as seemingly mundane as “Apple” and “Oxen”—is the touchingly real and often humorous story of a preteen’s struggles with family, friendship and first love.
Isadora “Tink” Aaron-Martin, nearly 13, means to make the most of her recent grounding by using her time on house arrest to write an encyclopedia, heavily annotated with footnotes. Frustrated by her reputation as the peacemaker, Tink’s entries about life with an autistic brother are fresh and painfully honest. Rivers doesn’t tiptoe around the destructive impact the syndrome can have on a family. Rather, through Tink, she explores what it’s like to grow up in a house where everyone is constantly walking on eggshells, waiting for the next violent outburst. But family isn’t the only place where Tink feels invisible. She also walks in the shadow of her “best friend,” Freddie Blue Anderson, who seems to care more about being “pops” (popular) than about Tink. It isn’t until a blue-haired skateboarder named Kai moves in next door that she gradually finds the strength to put herself first, both at home and at school.
Though the footnotes feel gimmicky and distracting, readers will likely be able to look past them (or just skip over them) and cheer for Tink as she comes into her own. (Fiction. 12-14)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-545-31028-4
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Levine/Scholastic
Review Posted Online: July 17, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2012
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