Newbery-winning Spinelli spins a magical and heartbreaking tale from the stuff of high school. Eleventh-grader Leo Borlock cannot quite believe the new student who calls herself Stargirl. Formerly home-schooled, Stargirl comes to their Arizona high school with a pet rat and a ukulele, wild clothes and amazing habits. She sings “Happy Birthday” to classmates in the lunchroom, props a small glass vase with a daisy on her desk each class, and reenergizes the cheerleading squad with her boundless enthusiasm. But Stargirl even cheers for the opposing team. She’s so threatening to the regular ways of her fellows that she’s shunned. No one will touch her or speak to her—or applaud her success when she wins a state speech tournament. Leo’s in love with her, but finds that if he’s with her, he’s shunned, too. She loves him enough to try to fit in, but when that fails spectacularly, she illuminates the spring school dance like a Roman candle and disappears. The desert—old bones, flowering cactus, scented silence—is a living presence here. So is the demon of conformity, a teen monster of what’s normal, a demon no less hideous because it’s so well internalized in us all. Leo chooses normalcy over star stuff, but looking back as an adult he finds Stargirl’s presence in a hundred different ways in his own and in his former classmates’ lives. Once again Spinelli takes his readers on a journey where choices between the self and the group must be made, and he is wise enough to show how hard they are, even when sweet. (Fiction. 11-14)
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-679-88637-0
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2000
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
Mia Singer (13) is having a bad year. Her grades are plummeting; her social life is practically nonexistent; she is experimenting with some serious shoplifting and skips school regularly. When the accidental death of a classmate prompts her to make a call to the school to announce her own death, she “agrees” to a mutual decision with her therapist, parents and school administrators and enrolls in an alternative boarding school. Mia quickly learns the only schooling here is the keeping of a journal and the dodging of classmates’ strange and erratic behavior. Her month-long stay provides an unexpected opportunity for her to reflect on her own behavior. When Mom picks her up for a weekend visit, they reconcile and terminate Mia’s alternative experience immediately. Her introduction to a world of different kids with serious challenges prompts a certain reality check about her own fortunate home and school life. But the source of her troubled behavior, a discontent with parental expectations, remains tenuous. (Fiction. 12-14)
Pub Date: Aug. 8, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-059607-4
Page Count: 176
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2006
Recruited from the streets of the Lower East Side in the 1890s, Sam and Izzy must retrieve gangster boss Monk Eastman’s prize racing pigeon from a cholera ship anchored in the harbor, thus bringing them into a dangerous relationship with the vicious mobster. There is plenty of action—gang fights, stealing aboard the eerie death ship, facing the wrath of a displeased crime boss—but New York City itself steals the show here, and Brown does an unusually fine job of evoking children’s life on the streets, hawking newspapers, picking pockets, mucking out stables—anything to make pennies. Short chapters, a brisk pace, lively dialogue and a compelling plot provide a totally engaging tale. Though readers may object to coarse words and ethnic slurs mouthed by characters, such language is as much a part of the flavor and authenticity the novel strives for as the descriptions of pushcarts, newsies and tenements. A good match with Deborah Hopkinson’s Shutting Out the Sky (2003) and Brown’s own picture book Kid Blink Beats the World (2004). (author’s note) (Fiction. 11-14)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2006
ISBN: 1-59643-139-3
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Deborah Brodie/Roaring Brook
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2006
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