Still, the atmospheric narrative is successful at revealing the tension and texture of a distinctive time and place and one...
A friendship between two teens, one black and one white, emerges both because and in spite of racial change in a 1970s Louisiana town.
The first time Rodney Boulet sees Tatum “Tater” Henry, he is being attacked for daring to come to a whites-only park. Despite the racial climate, Rodney and Tater become friends a few years later when Tater is the first African-American on the baseball team. Integration of the high school means that he, Rodney, and Rodney’s twin sister, Angie, will also be classmates. Angie seems to share their mother’s belief in equality, but Rodney carries many of his father’s prejudices. High school, with its emphasis on sports and dating, proves tough, especially as Tater demonstrates his talent as quarterback and he and Angie grow close. Bradley is an accomplished sportswriter and deftly evokes the cultural importance of small-town sports and how these communities experienced racial change in the late 1960s and early ’70s. Rodney and his family are richly drawn characters; indeed, narrator Rodney’s grappling with his ambivalence about race is especially well-done. Tater, on the other hand reads more like a symbol than a person. He has overcome tragedy, but readers are left to wonder at the source of his strength.
Still, the atmospheric narrative is successful at revealing the tension and texture of a distinctive time and place and one teenager’s struggle to make sense of it. (Historical fiction. 12-16)Pub Date: May 6, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4424-9793-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Atheneum
Review Posted Online: March 30, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2014
With a forthright intensity, Kittle's tale examines a complex subject.
This frank tale follows a girl’s journey of healing as she recovers from an eating disorder.
Hannah’s actor parents’ rising-star status necessitates relocating from Ohio to the epicenter of celebrity life: LA. At her new school, Hannah encounters the B-Squad—the reigning trio of eighth-grade girls, who sit in judgment on all things hip. Suddenly, all that Hannah loves to do—running track, her art work—is deemed uncool. In the wake of this upheaval and the devastating news of her mother’s terminal-cancer diagnosis, Hannah turns to her Secret Remedy—bulimia. Kittle scrutinizes how negative peer opinion can wreak havoc on a young teen’s fragile self-esteem. Her sometimes graphically detailed and unflinching portrayal of bulimia explores the insidious way it can overtake a person’s life both physically and emotionally. When Hannah’s illness spirals out of control, Aunt Izzy, a documentary filmmaker and recovered anorexic, intervenes. Izzy takes Hannah to Africa, where she is documenting the plight of the country’s orphans. Through her travels and experiences, Hannah gains a new perspective on the notion of beauty and friendship. The rather contrived healing and happy ending do not undercut the emotional intensity of Hannah's journey.
With a forthright intensity, Kittle's tale examines a complex subject. (Fiction. 13-16)Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-4022-6020-9
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Sourcebooks
Review Posted Online: Aug. 23, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
As a highly specific thesaurus it excels; as a story, not so much. Alan Cumyn covers much the same ground with considerably...
The story of a boy and his boners.
"Weinerschnitzel." "Wang." "Sky-high pork pipe." "Baloney pony." Those are just some of the names 13-year-old Bobby calls his errant penis (within the first three pages), which becomes erect at the most inconvenient times. After accidently shocking his math teacher into early retirement when she gets a gander at his tent pole, Bobby is sentenced to several hours of school therapy with a counselor who needs couch time herself. In addition, he must deal with his clueless parents, randy grandfather, angry sister and moronic best friend, Finkelstein. His life is further complicated by the fact that he has a crush on the new math teacher’s daughter and doesn’t know how to ask her to the Big Dance. Will Bobby’s wayward pecker continue to obstruct his path to true love? To say this lacks the subtlety and character development of Judy Blume’s classic male-puberty title, Then Again, Maybe I Won’t (1971), is putting it lightly. Stereotypical characterizations combined with a plot that reads like a rejected Family Guy script assure that the novel will find an enthusiastic audience with middle-school boys who share Sitomer’s dubious sense of humor, if with no one else. However, the excessive penis and fart jokes may tire even them.
As a highly specific thesaurus it excels; as a story, not so much. Alan Cumyn covers much the same ground with considerably more nuance, though for slightly older readers, in Tilt (2011). (Fiction. 12-14)Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-399-25498-7
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
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