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THE STREET BELONGS TO US

Name: THE STREET BELONGS TO US
Author: Karleen Pendleton Jiménez
ISBN: 978-1-55152-840-3

by Karleen Pendleton Jiménez ; illustrated by Gabriella Godoy ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2021

A thoughtful and poignant look at friendship, loss, and exploring cultural heritage.

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Tween best friends spend a summer waging a friendly street battle in 1980s Los Angeles.

Alex Richardson-Salazar lives on Muscatel Avenue, a street that abuts a freeway and Rosemead, a debris basin they call “the wash.” When the city begins to dig up the street to build sidewalks during the summer of 1984, tomboyish Alex and her best friend, Wolf McCann, decide the muddy trenches would make an ideal place to play. Wolf, who calls himself a soldier and has worn a camouflage uniform every day since his mother died two years earlier, helps Alex wage a lively war, using mud and water balloons as ammunition against the boys of the neighborhood. One day they discover a buried document referencing Aztlán, in the southwestern U.S. and northwestern Mexico. They consult Alex’s tiny, fierce Nana, and she is happy to tell the kids stories about everything from surviving the Mexican Revolution to the rise of Los Angeles’ Chicano movement. The narrative’s touching intergenerational relationships combined with the historical commentary are reminiscent of Meg Medina and Ruth Behar. The ample black-and-white illustrations skillfully capture the characters’ personalities, offering a cheerful glimpse into times when people used phones with cords and children engaged in hours of elaborate, outdoor play. Alex is White/Mexican; Wolf is cued as White, and the neighborhood is racially and ethnically diverse.

A thoughtful and poignant look at friendship, loss, and exploring cultural heritage. (Historical fiction. 9-12)

Pub Date: June 1, 2021

ISBN: 978-1-55152-840-3

Page Count: 216

Publisher: Arsenal Pulp Press

Review Posted Online: March 30, 2021

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2021

Categories:

CHILDREN'S SOCIAL THEMES | CHILDREN'S FAMILY

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CLUES TO THE UNIVERSE

by Christina Li ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 12, 2021

Charming, poignant, and thoughtfully woven.

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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

Categories:

CHILDREN'S FAMILY | CHILDREN'S SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY | CHILDREN'S SOCIAL THEMES

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NUMBER THE STARS

by Lois Lowry ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 1, 1989

A deftly told story that dramatizes how Danes appointed themselves bodyguards—not only for their king, who was in the habit...

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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)