Rachel’s father, a member of the National Guard, has come back from Iraq with a serious head injury and without one arm and one leg. In a first-person narration that features an overabundance of often-intrusive similes and metaphors and never truly captures an authentic 13-year-old voice, Rachel relates her family’s despair over her father’s lack of improvement, his growing social isolation and her mother’s eroding ability to cope. Rachel’s narrative focuses far more on feelings than events, with her initial anger gradually evolving into a discouraging although believable resignation. The lack of action may leave readers with little motivation to turn the pages, though. In an afterword, the author cites a statistic that more than 80 percent of Marines and Navy soldiers wounded in the war have brain injuries without mentioning that the same source, U.S. Army Institute of Surgical Research, states the figure for all wounded soldiers is about 22 percent. Most likely to resonate with children of seriously wounded veterans (who may find the lack of hope discouraging but accurate), Rachel’s slow-paced tale lacks significant general appeal. (Fiction. 11-14)
Pub Date: Sept. 8, 2009
ISBN: 978-1-60684-005-4
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Egmont USA
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2009
The wish-fulfilling title and sun-washed, catalog-beautiful teens on the cover will be enticing for girls looking for a...
Han’s leisurely paced, somewhat somber narrative revisits several beach-house summers in flashback through the eyes of now 15-year-old Isabel, known to all as Belly.
Belly measures her growing self by these summers and by her lifelong relationship with the older boys, her brother and her mother’s best friend’s two sons. Belly’s dawning awareness of her sexuality and that of the boys is a strong theme, as is the sense of summer as a separate and reflective time and place: Readers get glimpses of kisses on the beach, her best friend’s flirtations during one summer’s visit, a first date. In the background the two mothers renew their friendship each year, and Lauren, Belly’s mother, provides support for her friend—if not, unfortunately, for the children—in Susannah’s losing battle with breast cancer. Besides the mostly off-stage issue of a parent’s severe illness there’s not much here to challenge most readers—driving, beer-drinking, divorce, a moment of surprise at the mothers smoking medicinal pot together.
The wish-fulfilling title and sun-washed, catalog-beautiful teens on the cover will be enticing for girls looking for a diversion. (Fiction. 12-14)Pub Date: May 5, 2009
ISBN: 978-1-4169-6823-8
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2009
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
Newbery-winning Spinelli spins a magical and heartbreaking tale from the stuff of high school. Eleventh-grader Leo Borlock cannot quite believe the new student who calls herself Stargirl. Formerly home-schooled, Stargirl comes to their Arizona high school with a pet rat and a ukulele, wild clothes and amazing habits. She sings “Happy Birthday” to classmates in the lunchroom, props a small glass vase with a daisy on her desk each class, and reenergizes the cheerleading squad with her boundless enthusiasm. But Stargirl even cheers for the opposing team. She’s so threatening to the regular ways of her fellows that she’s shunned. No one will touch her or speak to her—or applaud her success when she wins a state speech tournament. Leo’s in love with her, but finds that if he’s with her, he’s shunned, too. She loves him enough to try to fit in, but when that fails spectacularly, she illuminates the spring school dance like a Roman candle and disappears. The desert—old bones, flowering cactus, scented silence—is a living presence here. So is the demon of conformity, a teen monster of what’s normal, a demon no less hideous because it’s so well internalized in us all. Leo chooses normalcy over star stuff, but looking back as an adult he finds Stargirl’s presence in a hundred different ways in his own and in his former classmates’ lives. Once again Spinelli takes his readers on a journey where choices between the self and the group must be made, and he is wise enough to show how hard they are, even when sweet. (Fiction. 11-14)
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-679-88637-0
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2000
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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