Schoolteachers Flinn and Fleury use a story of princes and princesses to introduce children to tuberous sclerosis complex in this child-friendly debut.
Princess Katie lives with her younger sister, Princess Sydney; her father, the King; and her mother, the Queen. Her life is mostly normal for a fairy-tale princess, as she lives in a castle, rides a pony and has tea parties. She also goes to school at the Royal Academy with many other princes and princesses, and takes part in fun extracurricular activities, such as swimming and ballet. But unlike her friends, Katie has to go to the doctor’s office frequently to get blood tests, ultrasounds and MRIs. Her parents explain to her that the reason for the visits is tuberous sclerosis complex, a disease she was born with that causes her body to work differently than other kids’. Although the symptoms vary, Princess Katie sometimes has seizures, which she likens to scary, unpredictable dragon attacks. She also needs extra help at school sometimes, and although she likes to play with other children, she occasionally has a hard time understanding her peers. A picnic with other kids who have TSC helps Katie understand that her disease isn’t something to worry about—it’s just something that makes her special. Flinn’s use of princes and princesses to stand in for ordinary girls and boys wears a bit thin, as she changes little about her characters’ world aside from adding the title “Royal” to the hospital and school settings. However, the conceit may work for children who gravitate toward princess stories and fairy tales. Fleury’s sweet illustrations present a range of skin tones and positive depictions of differently abled children. Although the pages are text-heavy, the vocabulary is manageable for newly independent readers. Overall, this depiction of TSC will help children to gain a sympathetic understanding of a rare disease.
An appealing introduction to TSC through a fairy-tale lens.
Pub Date: June 7, 2014
ISBN: 978-1499296563
Page Count: 32
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: July 31, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Beautifully refined, intelligent and profound.
Four teens must cling to each other for survival when they find that their remote wilderness boarding school is actually a school for vampires who are all too eager to feast on their new classmates.
Jung Soo, Hector Campos, Kathy Campion-Swink and Lionel Worthington each have different reasons for accepting scholarships to the Sawtooth Wilderness Academy: Soo loves the mountains and hopes to improve her English; Hector is offered the school as an alternative to juvie; Kathy has run away from a slew of boarding schools, and her parents were reassured to hear the academy has never had a successful runaway; and Lionel, who dreams of joining the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, has been promised private violin instruction at the academy after cuts to arts funding and rejectionfrom the Chicago High School for the Arts left him without other routes to pursue his dreams. Little do they know that the academy is actually a school for vampires; it has recently become a public charter school in order to accept state funding. To keep its funding, however, the school must pass an inspection by the school board, demonstrating a certain level of diversity, which the student body is severely lacking—that’s where the scholarship students come in. While the faculty has taken measures to protect the new students during the weeks leading up to the inspection, that hardly makes them feel safe: The Satanic Legion’s strong presence in the school is dying to find a way around the rules, and the moody, unpredictable teenage vampires constantly drool over them as a convenient source of nutrition. While they quickly find allies among the students and faculty, the main characters know they must escape. But how? And who will get hurt in the process? Schechter (Murder in Millbrook, 2012) manages to explore complex questions about ethics, diversity and culture without proselytizing to readers or detracting from an absolutely riveting storyline that few YA authors beyond Neal Shusterman have pulled off. The slow, sophisticated narrative structure reflects Shusterman’s, using multiple points of view and a lot of patience to allow readers to form their own opinions about richly developed characters as the story unfolds. While fans of teen vampires will be delighted to find something different, teen dystopia and horror fans who turn their noses up at the genre should certainly make an exception for this smart, fun read from an up-and-coming YA author.
Beautifully refined, intelligent and profound.Pub Date: Nov. 20, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-939166-26-5
Page Count: 446
Publisher: Merrimack Media
Review Posted Online: April 3, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A moving, mysterious coming-of-age story.
A debut YA novel that grapples with a slew of difficult issues, including grief, stepfamilies, loneliness and first love.
Sixteen-year-old Krista is having a hard time. She’s still grieving the recent death of her mother when her father’s girlfriend, Marie, moves into their home, and Krista feels like there’s no one she can talk to about her sadness. To make matters worse, her best friend, Lyla, is heading to Maine to spend time with her grandparents. As the novel unfolds, Krista feels pressure from the people around her to resume a normal life; her father wants her to find an activity to occupy her summer, and her neighbor encourages her to return to therapy. However, Krista doesn’t feel ready to be “normal” again; she’d rather shoplift, spend time in her tent on the roof, and sit in her car watching a mysterious house. Just when things start to feel too hard for her to bear, she meets Jake, the cute sales associate at a store where she shoplifts, and her father informs her that her grandfather, a Hungarian Holocaust survivor who lives in Venezuela, is coming to town for a visit. With these new developments, Krista begins to open up and embrace life again, and she gains a greater understanding of her family’s past and what she has to look forward to in life. Berla does an outstanding job of portraying the many issues teenagers grapple with, including first relationships, loss, alienation and low self-esteem. The book’s subject matter is relevant and relatable, and its plot is suspenseful and compelling, with a few important twists and turns at the end. Berla’s prose is beautiful and poignant, with elegant, effective metaphors; for example, Krista’s grandfather tries to explain to her how to rebuild her life after loss by using a metaphor of soup. A mixture of salt and water isn’t good to drink, he says, but when you “add juices from carrots and tomatoes and some other vegetables...the broth of the chicken and maybe some cream,” then “[y]ou can drink a whole bowl of it….Keep adding to your life—a little bit this, a little bit that. The salt is still there, but one day you won’t notice.”
A moving, mysterious coming-of-age story.Pub Date: Oct. 17, 2017
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Amberjack Publishing
Review Posted Online: March 28, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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