Lost tempers and conflicting loyalties color this bitter story of a family divided over the fate of a tract of Florida land. Miranda, 15, doesn't know why her father, Richard, and her grandmother, Lila, haven't spoken for years; she finds out when Lila, after a heart attack, invites Richard down to Turtle Island. The rift came when Richard promised to sell the land, upon inheriting it, to Skip Wilson, his closest childhood friend and a real-estate developer. Lila is a brisk and cheery old woman, looking decades younger than her age, and with an intimate knowledge of the local wildlife. Miranda is quickly won over, both by Lila and by the swamp's bird life and other beauties- -including Lila's handsome young half-Cherokee gardener, Adam. An avid photographer with sharp powers of observation, Miranda is a complex, believably developed teenager, but Sweeney (Free Fall, 1996, etc.) makes Richard the central character: He's a psychiatrist with a gift for alienating everyone he loves, responsible for nearly all the conflict, and, judging by the ferocity of his mood swings and tantrums, the one who feels his own failures most keenly. When Lila dies of a second heart attack and in her videotaped will entrusts the swamp to Adam, whom she knows will preserve it, Richard is torn between fighting for the property, or salvaging his remaining family relationships. After all the heartache, misunderstanding, and regrets, readers will be more exhausted than cheered by his choice. A novel of fierce emotions, credibly brewed. (Fiction. 12-15)
Pub Date: April 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-385-32510-X
Page Count: 244
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 1997
At the end of the term, a new student who is black and Vietnamese finds a morsel of hope that she too will find a place in...
This is almost like a play for 18 voices, as Grimes (Stepping Out with Grandma Mac, not reviewed, etc.) moves her narration among a group of high school students in the Bronx.
The English teacher, Mr. Ward, accepts a set of poems from Wesley, his response to a month of reading poetry from the Harlem Renaissance. Soon there’s an open-mike poetry reading, sponsored by Mr. Ward, every month, and then later, every week. The chapters in the students’ voices alternate with the poems read by that student, defiant, shy, terrified. All of them, black, Latino, white, male, and female, talk about the unease and alienation endemic to their ages, and they do it in fresh and appealing voices. Among them: Janelle, who is tired of being called fat; Leslie, who finds friendship in another who has lost her mom; Diondra, who hides her art from her father; Tyrone, who has faith in words and in his “moms”; Devon, whose love for books and jazz gets jeers. Beyond those capsules are rich and complex teens, and their tentative reaching out to each other increases as through the poems they also find more of themselves. Steve writes: “But hey! Joy / is not a crime, though / some people / make it seem so.”
At the end of the term, a new student who is black and Vietnamese finds a morsel of hope that she too will find a place in the poetry. (Fiction. 12-15)Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-8037-2569-8
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2001
Despite the stale fat-to-curvy pattern, compelling world building with a Southern European, pseudo-Christian feel,...
Adventure drags our heroine all over the map of fantasyland while giving her the opportunity to use her smarts.
Elisa—Princess Lucero-Elisa de Riqueza of Orovalle—has been chosen for Service since the day she was born, when a beam of holy light put a Godstone in her navel. She's a devout reader of holy books and is well-versed in the military strategy text Belleza Guerra, but she has been kept in ignorance of world affairs. With no warning, this fat, self-loathing princess is married off to a distant king and is embroiled in political and spiritual intrigue. War is coming, and perhaps only Elisa's Godstone—and knowledge from the Belleza Guerra—can save them. Elisa uses her untried strategic knowledge to always-good effect. With a character so smart that she doesn't have much to learn, body size is stereotypically substituted for character development. Elisa’s "mountainous" body shrivels away when she spends a month on forced march eating rat, and thus she is a better person. Still, it's wonderfully refreshing to see a heroine using her brain to win a war rather than strapping on a sword and charging into battle.
Despite the stale fat-to-curvy pattern, compelling world building with a Southern European, pseudo-Christian feel, reminiscent of Naomi Kritzer's Fires of the Faithful (2002), keeps this entry fresh. (Fantasy. 12-14)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-06-202648-4
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Greenwillow Books
Review Posted Online: July 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2011
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