A surprisingly deft mystery for early teens.
Convinced she is responsible for her best friend’s death, Cass feels haunted by Devin’s ghost even as she tries to hide her guilt.
Cass gradually reveals the actual events in chapters that alternate between “after” and “before.” Devin is not the most likable of creatures though infinitely prettier than her more “ample” friend and completely boy-obsessed. Fifteen-year-old Cass recalls various humiliations at Devin’s hands as well as her increasing isolation from other friends as the result of Devin’s machinations. As the truth of the killing finally emerges, first-time novelist Kam keeps atmosphere, suspense and characters realistically entwined. The language has a somewhat old-fashioned flavor, and although readers are soon likely to suspect that Cass is a rather unreliable narrator, Cass’ supernatural experience and revelation of events unfold smoothly. The well-developed cast of characters provides the needed red herrings in classic mystery fashion. The story is ideal for middle school readers who are on the cusp of discovering their romantic selves; Devin’s reckless, sexualized encounters with the opposite sex contrast well with Cass’ careful exploration of her own interest in a boy who actually sees her and finds her attractive. The charm necklaces the two girls purchase to epitomize their best friend status thread symbolically through the narrative, keeping the focus on their relationship.
A surprisingly deft mystery for early teens. (Mystery. 11-14)Pub Date: Oct. 14, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-934133-59-0
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Mackinac Island Press
Review Posted Online: July 28, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
Stands out neither as a folk-tale retelling, a coming-of-age story, nor a Holocaust novel.
A Holocaust tale with a thin “Hansel and Gretel” veneer from the author of The Devil’s Arithmetic (1988).
Chaim and Gittel, 14-year-old twins, live with their parents in the Lodz ghetto, forced from their comfortable country home by the Nazis. The siblings are close, sharing a sign-based twin language; Chaim stutters and communicates primarily with his sister. Though slowly starving, they make the best of things with their beloved parents, although it’s more difficult once they must share their tiny flat with an unpleasant interfaith couple and their Mischling (half-Jewish) children. When the family hears of their impending “wedding invitation”—the ghetto idiom for a forthcoming order for transport—they plan a dangerous escape. Their journey is difficult, and one by one, the adults vanish. Ultimately the children end up in a fictional child labor camp, making ammunition for the German war effort. Their story effectively evokes the dehumanizing nature of unremitting silence. Nevertheless, the dense, distancing narrative (told in a third-person contemporaneous narration focused through Chaim with interspersed snippets from Gittel’s several-decades-later perspective) has several consistency problems, mostly regarding the relative religiosity of this nominally secular family. One theme seems to be frustration with those who didn’t fight back against overwhelming odds, which makes for a confusing judgment on the suffering child protagonists.
Stands out neither as a folk-tale retelling, a coming-of-age story, nor a Holocaust novel. (author’s note) (Historical fiction. 12-14)Pub Date: March 6, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-399-25778-0
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Philomel
Review Posted Online: Dec. 20, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2018
Who can't love a story about a Nigerian-American 12-year-old with albinism who discovers latent magical abilities and saves the world? Sunny lives in Nigeria after spending the first nine years of her life in New York. She can't play soccer with the boys because, as she says, "being albino made the sun my enemy," and she has only enemies at school. When a boy in her class, Orlu, rescues her from a beating, Sunny is drawn in to a magical world she's never known existed. Sunny, it seems, is a Leopard person, one of the magical folk who live in a world mostly populated by ignorant Lambs. Now she spends the day in mundane Lamb school and sneaks out at night to learn magic with her cadre of Leopard friends: a handsome American bad boy, an arrogant girl who is Orlu’s childhood friend and Orlu himself. Though Sunny's initiative is thin—she is pushed into most of her choices by her friends and by Leopard adults—the worldbuilding for Leopard society is stellar, packed with details that will enthrall readers bored with the same old magical worlds. Meanwhile, those looking for a touch of the familiar will find it in Sunny's biggest victories, which are entirely non-magical (the detailed dynamism of Sunny's soccer match is more thrilling than her magical world saving). Ebulliently original. (Fantasy. 11-13)
Pub Date: April 14, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-670-01196-4
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: March 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2011
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