by Karen McWilliams ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 3, 2016
An unusual setting adds interest to this energetic account.
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This fictional diary, seventh in a series of children’s books, explores the life of black Seminoles as the Indian Removal Act begins to take effect.
Ebony Noel Carter, about 12, lives in Florida Big Swamp with her family, who belong to Seminole Indian Chief Jimmy Otter and his wife, Smiling Tiger (although tigers are not native to the Americas). Ebony’s father was a runaway slave from Georgia; in Florida, he met Ebony’s mother, a black Seminole (called slaves but similar to tenant farmers). Ebony’s siblings include Little John, about 16; a pesky younger brother, Pompey; and twin ever bickering sisters, Willie May and Jethro May, about 14. Ebony records scenes from everyday life—farmwork, meal preparation, fighting with siblings, storytelling—together with notable events like a birth, a death, visiting a trading post, and the Green Corn Dance, a dayslong Native American celebration. She describes the festival’s special games, dances, foods, and ceremonies, like Court Day, during which engagements are announced and punishments given to rule-breakers. This year, that includes Ebony, who has taken a forbidden look inside the men’s sweat house. The Corn Dance brings some wonderful news but also dreadful: War and forced Indian removals are coming. The Seminole community, both native and black, must flee from Florida toward a new chapter in their lives. An author’s note supplies some historical background. McWilliams (The Journal of Leroy Jeremiah Jones a Fugitive Slave (Alabama 1855), 2015, etc.) supplies a little-seen and intriguing setting for her African-American characters as black Seminoles in Florida. As in other series entries, the voice is exuberant—many capitals and exclamation points—and written in lively dialect: “And we gals hee haw and hee haw and HEE HAW ’cause not one of we can never say that white man’s name!” It’s hard to say how authentic Ebony’s dialect is, but it’s consistent and animated. Readers will likely enjoy the book’s cultural details, so different from a plantation setting. Barring a short epilogue, the book ends as the characters leave Florida, something of a lost opportunity.
An unusual setting adds interest to this energetic account.Pub Date: Jan. 3, 2016
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 263
Publisher: Time Tunnel Media
Review Posted Online: Jan. 16, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Robinne Lee ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 13, 2017
A fascinating, thought-provoking, genre-bending romantic read.
When Solène Marchand takes her 12-year-old daughter to a concert by the hottest boy band on the planet, she doesn't expect to fall in love with one of the singers.
Middle-aged art gallery owner Solène hasn’t dated since her divorce, but when her ex-husband buys their daughter and a group of her friends tickets to Vegas and a backstage concert experience, then backs out at the last minute, she steps in as escort. The five guys in the wildly popular English boy band August Moon appeal to women of all ages, but Hayes, the brains behind the group’s success, flirts with Solène at the concert meet and greet, invites them to a party after the show, then pursues her once she gets back to Los Angeles. He’s only 20 and he’s incredibly famous; his attention is flattering and heady. The two fall into an affair that’s supposed to be light and easy, but before long they can’t ignore their intense emotional attachment. Solène is hesitant to tell her daughter, but when she procrastinates, Isabelle learns about it through an online tabloid, which damages their relationship and leaves Solène open to censure from her ex. Then, once the affair goes viral, she experiences the darker side of Hayes’ fan base. What started out as a jaunty adventure turns into an emotionally fraught journey, and Solène must decide what she’s willing to risk for her happiness and what she won’t risk for her daughter’s. Actress Lee, who appeared in Fifty Shades Darker, debuts with a beautifully written novel that explores sex, love, romance, and fantasy in moving, insightful ways while also examining a woman’s struggle with aging and sexism, with a nod at the tension between celebrity and privacy.
A fascinating, thought-provoking, genre-bending romantic read.Pub Date: June 13, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-250-12590-3
Page Count: 384
Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
Review Posted Online: April 3, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2017
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BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
by Kathy Reichs ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 17, 2020
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.
Another sweltering month in Charlotte, another boatload of mysteries past and present for overworked, overstressed forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan.
A week after the night she chases but fails to catch a mysterious trespasser outside her town house, some unknown party texts Tempe four images of a corpse that looks as if it’s been chewed by wild hogs, because it has been. Showboat Medical Examiner Margot Heavner makes it clear that, breaking with her department’s earlier practice (The Bone Collection, 2016, etc.), she has no intention of calling in Tempe as a consultant and promptly identifies the faceless body herself as that of a young Asian man. Nettled by several errors in Heavner’s analysis, and even more by her willingness to share the gory details at a press conference, Tempe launches her own investigation, which is not so much off the books as against the books. Heavner isn’t exactly mollified when Tempe, aided by retired police detective Skinny Slidell and a host of experts, puts a name to the dead man. But the hints of other crimes Tempe’s identification uncovers, particularly crimes against children, spur her on to redouble her efforts despite the new M.E.’s splenetic outbursts. Before he died, it seems, Felix Vodyanov was linked to a passenger ferry that sank in 1994, an even earlier U.S. government project to research biological agents that could control human behavior, the hinky spiritual retreat Sparkling Waters, the dark web site DeepUnder, and the disappearances of at least four schoolchildren, two of whom have also turned up dead. And why on earth was Vodyanov carrying Tempe’s own contact information? The mounting evidence of ever more and ever worse skulduggery will pull Tempe deeper and deeper down what even she sees as a rabbit hole before she confronts a ringleader implicated in “Drugs. Fraud. Breaking and entering. Arson. Kidnapping. How does attempted murder sound?”
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.Pub Date: March 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9821-3888-2
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
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by Kathy Reichs
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by Kathy Reichs
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by Kathy Reichs
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