A sharp, tongue-in-cheek adventure set in a world of testing run amok.
A novel of intrigue centered on standardized school testing.
Spring (American Education, 2013) starts his over-the-top satirical novel with two plot twists to hook readers: First, the U.S. secretary of education keels over dead at his podium while giving a speech to a group of education officials in Dayton, Ohio. Second, an explosion rocks the Booker T. Washington Charter School in Cincinnati, which investigators later trace to a small storage room. The day before, two teachers had been in that room, industriously changing students’ answers on federally mandated Common Core standardized tests. The teachers commiserated about how traumatic students found the tests—and how poorly the tests’ manufacturer, Brightstone, designed them. During the investigation, the FBI exposes connections among the Cincinnati school system, Brightstone, and Kiwi, a China-based tech company that manufactures computers and tablets loaded with Brightstone testing materials. (There are frequent references to the April 2013 Boston Marathon bombings, but they’re never presented in an exploitative manner.) Kiwi is also pioneering a series of robot teachers to replace humans; they would “scurry around the room, giving positive reinforcement with silicone kisses and hugs.” As suicides mount at Kiwi’s China production plant, Brightstone executives huddle in their boardroom—their expensively tailored suits serving as shorthand for their general villainy—and gripe about the “crazies and teachers” complaining about Common Core (“You always have crackpots like that whining about something”). The high-spirited, engaging plot eventually branches into governmental conspiracies, financial misdeeds and international skullduggery—mostly involving scheming Chinese businessmen intent on using Kiwi technology and Brightstone greed to make a killing in the impending global robot-teacher market. The real enemy throughout, however, is the Common Core agenda itself—a stance that educators may find drolly entertaining but may somewhat limit the novel’s appeal.
A sharp, tongue-in-cheek adventure set in a world of testing run amok.Pub Date: Oct. 23, 2013
ISBN: 978-0615873541
Page Count: 188
Publisher: Phoenix Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 29, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
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