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
Certain to provoke controversy and difficult to see as a book for children, who could easily miss the painful point.
After Hitler appoints Bruno’s father commandant of Auschwitz, Bruno (nine) is unhappy with his new surroundings compared to the luxury of his home in Berlin.
The literal-minded Bruno, with amazingly little political and social awareness, never gains comprehension of the prisoners (all in “striped pajamas”) or the malignant nature of the death camp. He overcomes loneliness and isolation only when he discovers another boy, Shmuel, on the other side of the camp’s fence. For months, the two meet, becoming secret best friends even though they can never play together. Although Bruno’s family corrects him, he childishly calls the camp “Out-With” and the Fuhrer “Fury.” As a literary device, it could be said to be credibly rooted in Bruno’s consistent, guileless characterization, though it’s difficult to believe in reality. The tragic story’s point of view is unique: the corrosive effect of brutality on Nazi family life as seen through the eyes of a naïf. Some will believe that the fable form, in which the illogical may serve the objective of moral instruction, succeeds in Boyne’s narrative; others will believe it was the wrong choice.
Certain to provoke controversy and difficult to see as a book for children, who could easily miss the painful point. (Fiction. 12-14)Pub Date: Sept. 12, 2006
ISBN: 0-385-75106-0
Page Count: 224
Publisher: David Fickling/Random
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2006
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Though it lacks references or suggestions for further reading, Arn's agonizing story is compelling enough that many readers...
A harrowing tale of survival in the Killing Fields.
The childhood of Arn Chorn-Pond has been captured for young readers before, in Michelle Lord and Shino Arihara's picture book, A Song for Cambodia (2008). McCormick, known for issue-oriented realism, offers a fictionalized retelling of Chorn-Pond's youth for older readers. McCormick's version begins when the Khmer Rouge marches into 11-year-old Arn's Cambodian neighborhood and forces everyone into the country. Arn doesn't understand what the Khmer Rouge stands for; he only knows that over the next several years he and the other children shrink away on a handful of rice a day, while the corpses of adults pile ever higher in the mango grove. Arn does what he must to survive—and, wherever possible, to protect a small pocket of children and adults around him. Arn's chilling history pulls no punches, trusting its readers to cope with the reality of children forced to participate in murder, torture, sexual exploitation and genocide. This gut-wrenching tale is marred only by the author's choice to use broken English for both dialogue and description. Chorn-Pond, in real life, has spoken eloquently (and fluently) on the influence he's gained by learning English; this prose diminishes both his struggle and his story.
Though it lacks references or suggestions for further reading, Arn's agonizing story is compelling enough that many readers will seek out the history themselves. (preface, author's note) (Historical fiction. 12-15)Pub Date: May 8, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-06-173093-1
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Balzer + Bray/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 20, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2012
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