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CRACKED

Well-meaning but ineffective melodrama.

In a debut novel utterly devoid of subtlety, a bully and his primary target end up as roommates in a hospital psych ward.

Although Bull has tormented Victor ever since elementary school, both come from unhappy homes. Victor is the child of the most exaggeratedly miserable and demanding rich parents imaginable: When he receives a perfect score on only one of three SAT test sections, his mother, unable to eat, asks, “how could you let those other scores happen ... to us?” In Bull's somewhat less caricature-ish family, the grandfather is a violent drunk and the mother spends their food money on beer, but both are protective in their own way. Chapters narrated from each boy's perspective allow readers to see the same situations through both Bull's and Victor's eyes, from an improbable run-in at the Salvation Army to the boys' even more improbable stay in adjacent hospital beds. The hospital is a far more nourishing environment than either teen's home, and readers see both Bull and Victor open up in new ways during their time there. A poem central to the text suggests that mistreated people who feel empty can “fill / themselves / up,” but the healing here happens through others' intervention rather than through internal change.

Well-meaning but ineffective melodrama. (Fiction. 12-15)

Pub Date: March 6, 2012

ISBN: 978-1-4424-2916-1

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Simon Pulse/Simon & Schuster

Review Posted Online: Jan. 3, 2012

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2012

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DEAD WEDNESDAY

Characters to love, quips to snort at, insights to ponder: typical Spinelli.

For two teenagers, a small town’s annual cautionary ritual becomes both a life- and a death-changing experience.

On the second Wednesday in June, every eighth grader in Amber Springs, Pennsylvania, gets a black shirt, the name and picture of a teen killed the previous year through reckless behavior—and the silent treatment from everyone in town. Like many of his classmates, shy, self-conscious Robbie “Worm” Tarnauer has been looking forward to Dead Wed as a day for cutting loose rather than sober reflection…until he finds himself talking to a strange girl or, as she would have it, “spectral maiden,” only he can see or touch. Becca Finch is as surprised and confused as Worm, only remembering losing control of her car on an icy slope that past Christmas Eve. But being (or having been, anyway) a more outgoing sort, she sees their encounter as a sign that she’s got a mission. What follows, in a long conversational ramble through town and beyond, is a day at once ordinary yet rich in discovery and self-discovery—not just for Worm, but for Becca too, with a climactic twist that leaves both ready, or readier, for whatever may come next. Spinelli shines at setting a tongue-in-cheek tone for a tale with serious underpinnings, and as in Stargirl (2000), readers will be swept into the relationship that develops between this adolescent odd couple. Characters follow a White default.

Characters to love, quips to snort at, insights to ponder: typical Spinelli. (Fiction. 12-15)

Pub Date: Aug. 3, 2021

ISBN: 978-0-593-30667-3

Page Count: 240

Publisher: Knopf

Review Posted Online: May 31, 2021

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2021

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THE GOOD BRAIDER

Refreshing and moving: avoids easy answers and saviors from the outside.

From Sudan to Maine, in free verse.

It's 1999 in Juba, and the second Sudanese civil war is in full swing. Viola is a Bari girl, and she lives every day in fear of the government soldiers occupying her town. In brief free-verse chapters, Viola makes Juba real: the dusty soil, the memories of sweetened condensed milk, the afternoons Viola spends braiding her cousin's hair. But there is more to Juba than family and hunger; there are the soldiers, and the danger, and the horrifying interactions with soldiers that Viola doesn't describe but only lets the reader infer. As soon as possible, Viola's mother takes the family to Cairo and then to Portland, Maine—but they won't all make it. First one and then another family member is brought down by the devastating war and famine. After such a journey, the culture shock in Portland is unsurprisingly overwhelming. "Portland to New York: 234 miles, / New York to Cairo: 5,621 miles, / Cairo to Juba: 1,730 miles." Viola tries to become an American girl, with some help from her Sudanese friends, a nice American boy and the requisite excellent teacher. But her mother, like the rest of the Sudanese elders, wants to run her home as if she were back in Juba, and the inevitable conflict is heartbreaking.

Refreshing and moving: avoids easy answers and saviors from the outside. (historical note) (Fiction. 13-15)

Pub Date: May 1, 2012

ISBN: 978-0-7614-6267-5

Page Count: 224

Publisher: Marshall Cavendish

Review Posted Online: May 1, 2012

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2012

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