A comic romp that’s also an enlightening quest for increased awareness and self-understanding.
An impulsive comment regarding the upcoming election for class president propels 12-year-old David into the candidate’s spot.
When he learns that current president and reigning popular girl Veronica is going to run uncontested yet again, self-proclaimed band geek and trumpet player David takes a stand. However, as David contemplates his campaign, he and Veronica are invited to perform a duet at their school recital. Through their practice sessions, David discovers that Veronica’s life is not as ideal as he perceived. Subsequent encounters with Veronica’s parents illuminate her complicated, challenging family life. While David enters the election seeking to change things, the biggest change occurs within him after a series of revelations challenges David’s assumptions about Veronica, as well as another student in the popular group. Van Dolzer alternates the humor of David’s election-race antics with introspective moments focusing on his changing perceptions of Veronica’s situation. David’s narrative is a blend of candor and wry humor, conveying his earnestness beneath his uncertainty and bluster. His growing understanding of Veronica’s struggle to achieve her dreams in music and life contributes to his increasing ambivalence about the election. Ultimately, David’s emerging maturity is honestly won and will resonate with readers.
A comic romp that’s also an enlightening quest for increased awareness and self-understanding. (Fiction. 11-14)Pub Date: Aug. 4, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4926-0941-4
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Sourcebooks Jabberwocky
Review Posted Online: April 14, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Groups considering mounting productions that go beyond the popular musicals may want to consider looking at this uneven but...
Newly created plays for young people are not published very often, so this collection merits some attention.
The four dramas, commissioned by the well-respected Minneapolis Children’s Theater Company, are about growing up in ethnically diverse communities, but the plays cover different sets of problems for their young protagonists. Esperanza Rising, loosely adapted from the novel by Pam Muñoz Ryan, is set during the Depression, when Mexican immigrants competed with Okies for agricultural jobs in California. Esperanza changes from a pampered rich girl into a hard worker. The others are very contemporary. In Average Family, a reality-TV contest brings the wealthy Minneapolis Roubidoux family back to a Native American lifestyle they have never known. Also set in Minneapolis, the strongest play (at least on the page), Snapshot Silhouette, features a resilient Somali refugee, Najma, who finds both her voice and a new friend when she moves in with a well-meaning African American mother and her disaffected daughter; they are struggling as a family after the murder of an older daughter. Sasha, an isolated child of a Russian immigrant, finally gets to know her neighbors when she goes looking for a pen to write a research paper on the eponymous Brooklyn Bridge, the most artificial selection.
Groups considering mounting productions that go beyond the popular musicals may want to consider looking at this uneven but thought-provoking anthology. (Drama. 11-14)Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-8166-7313-1
Page Count: 296
Publisher: Univ. of Minnesota
Review Posted Online: Aug. 23, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2011
A stronger-than-she-realizes heroine uses her disconcerting telepathic gifts to help others and heal herself in this...
After moving to a rural Australian town, Sasha’s unwelcome premonitions lead her to solve a string of art thefts while tackling her own issues.
Ever since her mum left, Sasha’s “life has turned into a huge, weird disaster area.” The sad, anxious Sasha knows her dad’s trying hard to hold the family together. When he accepts a police job in Manna Creek to “make a new life,” Sasha decides she’ll give “moving to the back of nowhere” a chance, just to make him happy. Unimpressed with the drab town, the bedraggled house behind the police station and the hostile locals who resent the new cop’s kids, Sasha and younger brother Nicky explore with their new pet police dog, King. Sasha’s freaked out when she finds that she and King can communicate telepathically and even more upset when she starts dreaming about local people, past and present, who are about to die. Is there something wrong with her? Should she tell her father or repress everything? In an authentic first-person voice, Sasha fumes at her missing mum, reacts negatively to Manna Creek, supports her father and brother and conveys her fears about her telepathic powers as she leads the tense, fast-moving plot to resolution.
A stronger-than-she-realizes heroine uses her disconcerting telepathic gifts to help others and heal herself in this satisfying adventure. (Paranormal adventure. 11-14)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-61067-063-0
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Kane Miller
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2011
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