Shy, imaginative, lonely Malcolm Greeley, 12, has absorbed the message that he’s not good enough so fully that it’s become a voice in his head, predicting he’ll fail, blaming him after it happens.
When it comes to Little League, the voice sounds suspiciously like his dad’s, a former college athlete. Malcolm enjoys beating his dad playing miniature golf at Fritz’s, a shabby, quirkily furnished venue, until his dad enters him in a tournament, hiring a former nationally ranked golfer to coach him. Malcolm glumly accedes—the subject of his parents’ mounting arguments, Malcolm tries to avoid triggering them. Seedy and out of shape, coach Frank has hidden depths and, like Lex, the girl Malcolm meets at Fritz’s, helps Malcolm see his world differently. Major characters are white; several names suggest Asian ancestry. Structured like a golf game and employing golf analogies—with plenty of context for non–golf-conversant readers—the novel cuts between the tournament Malcolm’s currently playing and his journey to it. The voices he hears are not mental illness markers but opinions and beliefs he’s internalized. At its best, the novel is first-rate, masterfully conveying Malcolm’s anxious monitoring of rising marital conflict he’s at a loss to fix. Lex is a compelling character, comfortable in her skin, and rewardingly, Frank defies expectations. Watching Malcolm free himself from his need to fix others’ problems is exhilarating even if the neat ending partly undermines that message.
Droll, moving, resonant. (Fiction. 9-12)Pub Date: May 5, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-06-264392-6
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Walden Pond Press/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
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Parallel storylines take readers through the lives of two young people on Sept. 11 in 2001 and 2019.
In the contemporary timeline, Reshmina is an Afghan girl living in foothills near the Pakistan border that are a battleground between the Taliban and U.S. armed forces. She is keen to improve her English while her twin brother, Pasoon, is inspired by the Taliban and wants to avenge their older sister, killed by an American bomb on her wedding day. Reshmina helps a wounded American soldier, making her village a Taliban target. In 2001, Brandon Chavez is spending the day with his father, who works at the World Trade Center’s Windows on the World restaurant. Brandon is heading to the underground mall when a plane piloted by al-Qaida hits the tower, and his father is among those killed. The two storylines develop in parallel through alternating chapters. Gratz’s deeply moving writing paints vivid images of the loss and fear of those who lived through the trauma of 9/11. However, this nuance doesn’t extend to the Afghan characters; Reshmina and Pasoon feel one-dimensional. Descriptions of the Taliban’s Afghan victims and Reshmina's gentle father notwithstanding, references to all young men eventually joining the Taliban and Pasoon's zeal for their cause counteract this messaging. Explanations for the U.S. military invasion of Afghanistan in the author’s note and in characters’ conversations too simplistically present the U.S. presence.
Falters in its oversimplified portrayal of a complicated region and people. (author’s note) (Fiction. 9-12)Pub Date: Feb. 2, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-338-24575-2
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Dec. 15, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2021
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The author of the Anastasia books as well as more serious fiction (Rabble Starkey, 1987) offers her first historical fiction—a story about the escape of the Jews from Denmark in 1943.
Five years younger than Lisa in Carol Matas' Lisa's War (1989), Annemarie Johansen has, at 10, known three years of Nazi occupation. Though ever cautious and fearful of the ubiquitous soldiers, she is largely unaware of the extent of the danger around her; the Resistance kept even its participants safer by telling them as little as possible, and Annemarie has never been told that her older sister Lise died in its service. When the Germans plan to round up the Jews, the Johansens take in Annemarie's friend, Ellen Rosen, and pretend she is their daughter; later, they travel to Uncle Hendrik's house on the coast, where the Rosens and other Jews are transported by fishing boat to Sweden. Apart from Lise's offstage death, there is little violence here; like Annemarie, the reader is protected from the full implications of events—but will be caught up in the suspense and menace of several encounters with soldiers and in Annemarie's courageous run as courier on the night of the escape. The book concludes with the Jews' return, after the war, to homes well kept for them by their neighbors.
A deftly told story that dramatizes how Danes appointed themselves bodyguards—not only for their king, who was in the habit of riding alone in Copenhagen, but for their Jews. (Historical fiction. 9-12)Pub Date: April 1, 1989
ISBN: 0547577095
Page Count: 156
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: Oct. 17, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1989
Categories: CHILDREN'S SOCIAL THEMES | CHILDREN'S HISTORICAL FICTION
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