Amelia and Charly are very close, but as different as siblings can be: Amelia focuses on academics and athletics, and is...
Teen pregnancy is a source of shame in this disappointing second outing from Martinez (Virtuosity, 2011).
Amelia and Charly are very close, but as different as siblings can be: Amelia focuses on academics and athletics, and is almost prissy in her moral uprightness, while Charly flirts with the boundaries of acceptable behavior for preachers’ kids with her devil-may-care antics and free-spirited adventures. When Charly discovers that she’s pregnant after what appears to be a one-night stand, the girls’ grandmother chooses a very mid-20th-century approach to squashing the inevitable conservative small-town gossip, sending the girls to live with their late mother’s sister, Bree, in Calgary, until Charly gives birth and selects adoptive parents for her baby. Grandma’s jaw-droppingly retro decision, motivated by a wish to protect the girls’ father from the truth, means that both girls have to go to maintain the fiction of going to acquaint themselves with their Canadian relatives. Amelia, furious at being so out of control of her life, lashes out repeatedly at Charly. Amelia doesn’t exercise much self-awareness until she sees how gracefully Ezra—the cute library worker with whom she enjoys crackling chemistry—handles his own family burdens, and Charly finally confides the terrible secret she’s been hiding. This old-fashioned–feeling problem novel lets readers down in its focus on shame rather than the hugely life-altering results of teen pregnancy.Pub Date: Oct. 16, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-4424-2055-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Simon Pulse/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Aug. 14, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2012
A keenly crafted thriller.
When a suburban high school is devastated by a bombing, a diverse group of teens gathers to find a way out.
Minor connections pre-exist among the group: biracial (black/white) Tad is on the football team with the popular Frankie, a white boy, and the pair may be a little more than just friends. Latino Z has been pegged as the class ne’er-do-well; Palestinian-American Rashid, an observant Muslim, feels extra conspicuous now that his beard has started growing. Of course, everyone knows the white daughter of a U.S. senator, the perfectly popular Diana. The wildcard is olive-skinned Cassandra, the new kid in school. When word reaches the gang that the bomber may still be inside the building, tensions rise and the small bonds just being forged threaten to disintegrate. The third-person perspective shifts chapter to chapter, letting readers into each of the character’s heads. Some of the characters are fuller than others (Z is frustratingly thin), but through their eyes the author lays out the geography of the school before the bombing and smartly paces the aftermath. Charbonneau makes the bold move of letting readers—though not all the characters—know who the bomber is right away. This pivots the suspense from a whodunit to a survival tale, and the author effectively charts the action, taking time to allow the kids to discuss current events and the perils of false assumptions.
A keenly crafted thriller. (Thriller. 12-16)Pub Date: March 13, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-544-41670-3
Page Count: 352
Publisher: HMH Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 21, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2017
Nuanced and riveting in equal parts.
The story of two young Japanese-American men who enlist in the 442nd Regiment, a segregated unit of Japanese-American soldiers and white officers that fought in the European Theater.
Before getting to the war, Hughes provides an on-the-ground view of the American government roundup of Japanese immigrants and citizens after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, their detainment, and eventual transport to internment camps. As seen through the eyes of Topaz internees Yuki and his friend Shig, fighting for the United States would redeem their honor as Americans, but gradually their perspective changes. They learn that honor is not a public display but rather something earned (or not) by comrades undergoing extreme hardship and covering one another’s backs. Hughes sends these men through the wringer. They endure foot rot and the stress of taking the next hill (which is worse is up for grabs), and they also grapple with the consequences: how does one reconcile shooting a kid, even if he’s an enemy soldier? Yuki reflects that “what he and Shig were doing—and the Germans, too—was brutal, disgusting,” and he would “spend his life trying to remove all this ugliness from his head and his hands.” Throughout, Hughes never shies from the institutionalized bigotry that put these Americans of Japanese ancestry into harm’s way more than their fair share of times.
Nuanced and riveting in equal parts. (Historical fiction. 12-16)Pub Date: Nov. 8, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4814-6252-5
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Atheneum
Review Posted Online: Aug. 29, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2016
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