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JUST ONE TEAR

Name: JUST ONE TEAR
Author: K.L. Mahon
ISBN: 0-688-13519-6

by K.L. Mahon ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 1994

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Responding empathetically to a friend's traumatic loss of his father, a 14-year-old Australian girl has recreated his experience as a novel in the form of a diary. In spare language that achieves a kind of eloquence through its very simplicity, Mahon writes a brief entry—a few lines to a page or two—for most days from March 2, when her fictional protagonist records sitting by his dying father, until two months later, when the boy's confusion and anger (largely directed at his mother, who seems to have abandoned him in her own grief) begin to be resolved. Love for his mother reasserts itself; understanding that death is ``silence,'' ``lonely,'' ``loss,'' and ``sometimes selfish'' frees a first tear. The circumstances the young author presents are melodramatic: the father was murdered; the boy, a witness, is hectored in court; the accused is acquitted; the despairing boy is befriended by a despondent stranger who later commits suicide. Possibly all these things happened to Mahon's real friend; in any case, other young people are sure to recognize her well-realized character's complicated emotions as genuine. (Fiction. 11-15)

Pub Date: March 1, 1994

ISBN: 0-688-13519-6

Page Count: 64

Publisher: N/A

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1994

Categories:

CHILDREN'S GENERAL CHILDREN'S

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JOEY PIGZA SWALLOWED THE KEY

From the Joey Pigza series , Vol. 1

by Jack Gantos ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 1, 1998

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If Rotten Ralph were a boy instead of a cat, he might be Joey, the hyperactive hero of Gantos's new book, except that Joey is never bad on purpose. In the first-person narration, it quickly becomes clear that he can't help himself; he's so wound up that he not only practically bounces off walls, he literally swallows his house key (which he wears on a string around his neck and which he pull back up, complete with souvenirs of the food he just ate). Gantos's straightforward view of what it's like to be Joey is so honest it hurts. Joey has been abandoned by his alcoholic father and, for a time, by his mother (who also drinks); his grandmother, just as hyperactive as he is, abuses Joey while he's in her care. One mishap after another leads Joey first from his regular classroom to special education classes and then to a special education school. With medication, counseling, and positive reinforcement, Joey calms down. Despite a lighthearted title and jacket painting, the story is simultaneously comic and horrific; Gantos takes readers right inside a human whirlwind where the ride is bumpy and often frightening, especially for Joey. But a river of compassion for the characters runs through the pages, not only for Joey but for his overextended mom and his usually patient, always worried (if only for their safety) teachers. Mature readers will find this harsh tale softened by unusual empathy and leavened by genuinely funny events. (Fiction. 11-13)

Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1998

ISBN: 0-374-33664-4

Page Count: 154

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1998

Categories:

CHILDREN'S GENERAL CHILDREN'S

- BOOK REVIEW
WRITING RADAR
by Jack Gantos ; illustrated by Jack Gantos

- BOOK REVIEW
THE TROUBLE IN ME
by Jack Gantos

- BOOK REVIEW
THE KEY THAT SWALLOWED JOEY PIGZA
by Jack Gantos

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DANIEL'S STORY

by Carol Matas ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 1, 1993

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After witnessing the rising tide of anti-Semitism in Nazi Germany, Daniel is suddenly transported, at age 14, from his comfortable life in Frankfurt to a Polish ghetto, then to Auschwitz and Buchenwald—losing most of his family along the way, seeing Nazi brutality of both the casual and the calculated kind, and recording atrocities with a smuggled camera (``What has happened to me?...Who am I? Where am I going?''). Matas, explicating an exhibit of photos and other materials at the new United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, creates a convincing composite youth and experience—fictional but carefully based on survivors' accounts. It's a savage story with no attempt to soften the culpability of the German people; Daniel's profound anger is easier to understand than is his father's compassion or his sister's plea to ``chose love. Always choose love.'' Daniel survives to be reunited, after the war, with his wife-to-be, but his dying friend's last word echoes beyond the happy ending: ``Remember...'' An unusual undertaking, effectively carried out. Chronology; glossary. (Fiction. 11-14)