An absorbing account of grappling with identity.
Lizzy is angry and combative when it comes to accepting her Chinese heritage in Nieber’s middle-grade novel.
Abandoned in China as a baby, Lizzy has grown up in America, where she feels she has “never felt excluded. To be honest, [she] never felt Asian.” Lizzy’s adoptive American mother has tried—too hard, in the tween’s view—to give her some experience of her Chinese cultural heritage. Lizzy resists these efforts; to her, soccer, at which she excels, is much more important than learning classical Chinese dance. When her initial efforts to be friendly with “real Chinese girls” in the dance class fail, she determines to succeed at dancing, just to show them, but she faces vile prejudice. Lizzy enlists her knowledgeable “sorta sister” Zoe to help, although the results confound Lizzy’s expectations and lead to a serious rift with her sibling. At school, an insensitive ancestry tree assignment makes everything worse, but it eventually sparks Lizzy’s creative side. She struggles to figure out her own emotions, and to share them, but then her Grandma Sophie recounts her own similar childhood distress at being called an “Oreo” and rouses Lizzy to fight. A threat to Lizzy’s soccer supremacy adds suspense and thematic relevance as she contends with a boorish boy with problems of his own. The protagonist’s complex feelings drive this sympathetic but cleareyed story of navigating a dual inheritance, and Nieber’s style is confident in this book, with convincing dialogue. Lizzy’s feisty spirit shines through as she deals with emotional ups and downs. That said, adults are often portrayed as unrealistically dim, and some parents are depicted as actively cruel. Still, two-culture kids are sure to find aspects that resonate with them, and soccer fans will enjoy the many specific references to their sport.
An absorbing account of grappling with identity.Pub Date: May 3, 2022
ISBN: 9781639841882
Page Count: 180
Publisher: Pen It! Publications, LLC
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2026
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Charming, poignant, and thoughtfully woven.
An aspiring scientist and a budding artist become friends and help each other with dream projects.
Unfolding in mid-1980s Sacramento, California, this story stars 12-year-olds Rosalind and Benjamin as first-person narrators in alternating chapters. Ro’s father, a fellow space buff, was killed by a drunk driver; the rocket they were working on together lies unfinished in her closet. As for Benji, not only has his best friend, Amir, moved away, but the comic book holding the clue for locating his dad is also missing. Along with their profound personal losses, the protagonists share a fixation with the universe’s intriguing potential: Ro decides to complete the rocket and hopes to launch mementos of her father into outer space while Benji’s conviction that aliens and UFOs are real compels his imagination and creativity as an artist. An accident in science class triggers a chain of events forcing Benji and Ro, who is new to the school, to interact and unintentionally learn each other’s secrets. They resolve to find Benji’s dad—a famous comic-book artist—and partner to finish Ro’s rocket for the science fair. Together, they overcome technical, scheduling, and geographical challenges. Readers will be drawn in by amusing and fantastical elements in the comic book theme, high emotional stakes that arouse sympathy, and well-drawn character development as the protagonists navigate life lessons around grief, patience, self-advocacy, and standing up for others. Ro is biracial (Chinese/White); Benji is White.
Charming, poignant, and thoughtfully woven. (Fiction. 9-12)Pub Date: Jan. 12, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-06-300888-5
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Quill Tree Books/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Oct. 26, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A deftly told story that dramatizes how Danes appointed themselves bodyguards—not only for their king, who was in the habit...
The author of the Anastasia books as well as more serious fiction (Rabble Starkey, 1987) offers her first historical fiction—a story about the escape of the Jews from Denmark in 1943.
Five years younger than Lisa in Carol Matas' Lisa's War (1989), Annemarie Johansen has, at 10, known three years of Nazi occupation. Though ever cautious and fearful of the ubiquitous soldiers, she is largely unaware of the extent of the danger around her; the Resistance kept even its participants safer by telling them as little as possible, and Annemarie has never been told that her older sister Lise died in its service. When the Germans plan to round up the Jews, the Johansens take in Annemarie's friend, Ellen Rosen, and pretend she is their daughter; later, they travel to Uncle Hendrik's house on the coast, where the Rosens and other Jews are transported by fishing boat to Sweden. Apart from Lise's offstage death, there is little violence here; like Annemarie, the reader is protected from the full implications of events—but will be caught up in the suspense and menace of several encounters with soldiers and in Annemarie's courageous run as courier on the night of the escape. The book concludes with the Jews' return, after the war, to homes well kept for them by their neighbors.
A deftly told story that dramatizes how Danes appointed themselves bodyguards—not only for their king, who was in the habit of riding alone in Copenhagen, but for their Jews. (Historical fiction. 9-12)Pub Date: April 1, 1989
ISBN: 0547577095
Page Count: 156
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: Oct. 17, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1989
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
