A gripping examination of a tsunami and its aftermath.
A fictionalized narrative follows a young survivor of the 2011 tsunami in Japan and looks at how his life and town change in its wake.
Hotaka Yamato (his name is rendered in the Western fashion, with family name second) and his best friend, Takeshi, are planning to see a puppet show when an earthquake suddenly hits near their seaside town. A tsunami soon follows, and their tiny village is devastated. Hotaka survives, but many do not; he is one of the fortunate residents who live on the higher grounds and is able to escape the rising waters. Three years later, the denizens are still coping with the disaster, and while the town is beginning to rebuild, the burgeoning seawall has left many residents angry. Hotaka’s classmate Sakura in particular hates the wall, along with the political corruption and sharp socio-economic division it embodies. When she and her friends protest the seawall, violence against the teens and their families ensues. Heffernan’s dramatic account spares its readers little, using its propulsive plotting to highlight not only the immediate devastation of the tsunami, but also its lingering effects. Helpful addenda include a glossary of Japanese words, historical timeline, and sources for additional reading. Fans aging out of the popular I Survived…series may appreciate the same quick pacing and the deeper dive into the aftermath of a natural disaster.
A gripping examination of a tsunami and its aftermath. (map, author’s note, timeline, glossary) (Historical fiction. 7-13)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-76011-376-6
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Allen & Unwin
Review Posted Online: July 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2017
Easy to read and strong on sibling devotion, with frustratingly mixed messages about personal responsibility.
A boy works desperately to keep his sick little brother safe.
Twelve-year-old Timothy has a probation officer, a court-appointed psychologist, and a yearlong sentence of house arrest. He also has a 9-month-old brother who breathes through a trach tube that frequently clogs. Heavy oxygen tanks and a suction machine as loud as a jackhammer are their everyday equipment. Timothy’s crime: charging $1,445 on a stolen credit card for a month of baby Levi’s medicine, which his mother can’t afford, especially since his father left. The text shows illness, poverty, and hunger to be awful but barely acknowledges the role of, for example, weak health insurance, odd considering the nature of Timothy’s crime. The family has nursing help but not 24/7; the real house arrest in Timothy’s life isn’t a legal pronouncement, it’s the need to keep Levi breathing. Sometimes Timothy’s the only person home to do so. His court sentence requires keeping a journal; the premise that Holt’s straightforward free-verse poems are Timothy’s writing works well enough, though sometimes the verses read like immediate thoughts rather than post-event reflection. A sudden crisis at the climax forces Timothy into criminal action to save Levi’s life, but literally saving his brother from death doesn’t erase the whiff of textual indictment for lawbreaking. Even Mom equivocates, which readers may find grievously unjust.
Easy to read and strong on sibling devotion, with frustratingly mixed messages about personal responsibility. (Verse fiction. 9-13)Pub Date: Oct. 6, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4521-3477-2
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Chronicle Books
Review Posted Online: July 14, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2015
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Ideas abound, but when the focus shifts from Thomas' determination to take the measure of the house (literally and...
Dies Drear? Ohio abolitionist, keeper of a key station on the Underground Railroad, bearer of a hypercharged name that is not even noted as odd. Which is odd: everything else has an elaborate explanation.
Unlike Zeely, Miss Hamilton's haunting first, this creates mystery only to reveal sleight-of-hand, creates a character who's larger than life only to reveal his double. Thirteen-year-old Thomas Small is fascinated, and afraid, of the huge, uncharted house his father, a specialist in Negro Civil War history, has purposefully rented. A strange pair of children, tiny Pesty and husky Mac Darrow, seem to tease him; old bearded Pluto, long-time caretaker and local legend, seems bent on scaring the Smalls away. But how can a lame old man run fast enough to catch Thomas from behind? what do the triangles affixed to their doors signify? who spread a sticky paste of foodstuffs over the kitchen? Pluto, accosted, disappears. . . into a cavern that was Dies Drear's treasure house of decorative art, his solace for the sequestered slaves. But Pluto is not, despite his nickname, the devil; neither is he alone; his actor-son has returned to help him stave off the greedy Darrows and the Smalls, if they should also be hostile to the house, the treasure, the tradition. Pluto as keeper of the flame would be more convincing without his, and his son's, histrionics, and without Pesty as a prodigy cherubim. There are some sharp observations of, and on, the Negro church historically and presently, and an aborted ideological debate regarding use of the Negro heritage.
Ideas abound, but when the focus shifts from Thomas' determination to take the measure of the house (literally and figuratively), the story becomes a charade. (Mystery. 8-12)Pub Date: Sept. 9, 1968
ISBN: 1416914056
Page Count: 260
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 26, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1968
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