A beautiful, sometimes-bittersweet story of friendship overcoming racial obstacles.
In South Carolina in 1945, 12-year-olds Hazel Jackson and Lily Wagner may as well be from different worlds.
Hazel, a Black girl, lives on the “colored” side of Mayfield while Lily, a White girl, lives in the White part of town. Ma Maybelle, Hazel’s grandmother, works for Lily’s family, and Hazel begins to help her grandmother out at her job over the summer. When Lily’s father takes down the “Whites Only” sign from the front entrance of his grocery store, White locals are none too pleased. Lily’s best friend is even ordered to stay away from her. With helping to raise her younger siblings, Hazel has known grown-up responsibilities for most of her life. So even though Ma brings her along to help at the Wagners’, she hopes that it will give Hazel some freedom to be a carefree child. After forming a close friendship thanks to their love of reading, both girls begin to see different aspects of life. Lily’s eyes are opened to the causes and impacts of segregation while Hazel begins to see that she can be a hero and affect change in her own way. Approaching mature subjects through accessible language, Proctor relays a story about harsh, uncomfortable realities while maintaining a thread of hope and compassion. This book introduces themes of standing up for what’s right, allyship, and forgiveness.
A beautiful, sometimes-bittersweet story of friendship overcoming racial obstacles. (author's note, suggested reading) (Fiction. 10-12)Pub Date: June 8, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-945419-54-6
Page Count: 260
Publisher: Fawkes Press
Review Posted Online: May 18, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
A reeking vagrant instills homey togetherness in a family ruled by a domineering mother in this uneven production from the team behind The Boy in the Dress (2009). Sure that Mr. Stink’s intriguing combination of gentle, refined speech and eye-watering personal hygiene signals a tragic past (which it actually does, as it turns out), 12-year-old Chloe secretly invites him to move into the shed behind her home. This touches off a series of events that lead to Chloe’s pretentious mother becoming a public laughingstock on national television, provide a chance for Chloe to meet and be rude (“stick it up your fat bum!”) to the oily Prime Minister and finally induce sudden, radical transformations in both of her parents as well as her villainous little sister just in time for Christmas. Refusing to change himself, Mr. Stink thereupon rambles off into the night. The funny bits, including Blake’s occasional spot sketches, are really funny, but the rest of the trite tale comes off as no more than a convenient framework on which to hang them and a set of typecast characters. (Fiction. 10-12)
Pub Date: Sept. 30, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-59514-332-7
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Razorbill/Penguin
Review Posted Online: July 15, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2010
An engaging portrait of two children’s world before they became famous.
The friendship of Nelle Harper Lee and Truman Capote, inspiration for Scout and Dill in Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, is fictionalized in “a flavorful bowl of southern homestyle yarns.”
A girl dressed like a boy and a boy dressed like Little Lord Fauntleroy meet and become fast friends in Monroeville, Alabama, “sometime in the Great Depression.” They contrive adventures to spice up life in Monroeville, and their stories add up to a fine re-creation of small-town Southern life. Young readers will enjoy Nelle and Tru’s treehouse, adventure at the courthouse, their brush with the Ku Klux Klan, Nelle’s father, Amasa Coleman Lee, staring down the Grand Dragon, and reclusive spooky neighbor Sonny Boular firing their imaginations. Older readers, including all of the teachers of the classic novel, will see in these childhood adventures the makings of To Kill a Mockingbird, and the author’s note adds helpful information and mentions Go Set a Watchman without getting into the intricate relationship of that novel to its famous offspring. Since Nelle and Tru loved writing stories, Neri even includes “reimagined” short stories from Nelle’s and Tru’s lives. The charming and elegantly written novel doesn’t shy away from issues of mental illness, child abandonment, and racism, but they are woven neatly into the fabric of the characters’ lives in the tiny Southern town.
An engaging portrait of two children’s world before they became famous. (Historical fiction. 10-12)Pub Date: March 1, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-544-69960-1
Page Count: 336
Publisher: HMH Books
Review Posted Online: Dec. 7, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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