Nevertheless, fills the bill for teens looking for an atypical action adventure.
A teen goes to desperate lengths to save his family’s diner in this unevenly executed fishing drama set on Narragansett Bay.
Fourteen-year-old Jake Cole’s father was lost at sea last year. Since then, he and his mother haven’t been able to keep up with the family diner’s mortgage payments to the local loan sharks. His mother is ready to give up and move in with his grandmother in Arizona, but Jake has a plan. Previously polluted Barrington Beach is about to be reopened for quahog harvesting. If he and his father’s old quahogging buddy Gene can pull enough clams once the beach reopens, they may be able to raise most of the mortgage money. Jake is working on getting the rest of the money by illegally fishing at night with a mysterious man he calls Captain, who claims to have known his father. But when Gene is hurt in a boating accident, Jake must work Barrington Beach alone. Can he pull enough quahogs to pay off the mob? While the distinct, clearly realized setting details distinguish this title from the vast schools of novels for young teens swimming in the publishing sea, choppy pace and perfunctory dialogue drag it down to the ocean floor.
Nevertheless, fills the bill for teens looking for an atypical action adventure. (map) (Fiction. 12-15)Pub Date: April 8, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-7636-6905-8
Page Count: 294
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: Jan. 28, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2014
Insurmountably flawed.
When peer pressure draws seventh grader Manny into a gang with his Latino friends, he must make difficult decisions.
Life in elementary school was simple compared to the first weeks at Orbe Nuevo Middle School. Mexican-American Manny and his childhood friends have inexplicably formed the Conquistadors. In quick succession, his friends are shaving their heads, tagging bridges, starting fights and looking for trouble. Manny, conflicted by an inner dialogue that rarely matches his actions, shaves his head but manages to stay on the periphery of the book’s prejudice, violence and profanity. Soon, his friends have talked him into buying marijuana on credit from another student. Within months, the other boys have switched from “herb” to meth. A final fight leaves two boys hospitalized and forces Manny to decide who his friends really are. Conveniently, Castan supplies a girlfriend and a new African-American neighbor. In this heavy-handed treatise against gangs and drug use, the debut novelist perpetuates the same negative images that Latino teens face daily in the media. The text is an onslaught of Latino caricatures: gullible, unemployed women cooking in the kitchen, abusive, alcoholic men running illegal businesses and young adult males serving time in prison. For a realistic and well-written novel with similar themes, try Victor Martinez’s Parrot in the Oven (1996).
Insurmountably flawed. (Fiction. 12-15)Pub Date: Aug. 15, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-8234-2268-5
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Holiday House
Review Posted Online: July 5, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
When an unexpected visitor threatens to take away everything Jamie has ever wanted, she has to decide how far she is willing to go to make sure that what belongs to her stays hers.
From the hand-dipped caramel apples to the giant tower of pumpkins, Jamie loves everything about her family’s pumpkin patch. But her two favorite things about the Patch are the thought of becoming the next Pumpkin Princess and Danny, her father’s hard-working and crush-worthy farmhand. Everything changes when Milan, Jamie’s Hollywood starlet cousin, comes to live with the family. Soon Jamie’s mother is cooking vegetarian dinners, her father is considering selling pumpkin lattes at the Patch and Danny seems to be star-struck. Milan’s announcement that she is going to run for Pumpkin Princess is the last straw. Unusual details, such as bizarre caramel-apple concoctions and the teenagers’ habit of chucking corn at people while they are cruising, are bright lights in an otherwise dim narrative. Stock characters, a predictable plot and unimaginative dialogue combine to create a flat story that is both overfamiliar and completely forgettable. Readers looking for a serving of small-town life with a side of royal quirkiness would do well to look elsewhere. (Fiction. 12-15)
Pub Date: Oct. 11, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-374-36150-1
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Aug. 16, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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