Numerous omissions and inaccuracies work against the earnest “war hurts everyone” message.
All that’s left of Ella Mae’s cousin Robby, killed in combat on Iwo Jima, are his bloodstained dog tags, but a California scientist claims that using the DNA it contains, he can reconstruct him.
Dr. Franks succeeds—except that the person he reconstructs is a young Japanese soldier, Takuma, not Robby. After Robby’s mother refuses to take responsibility for Takuma, Ella Mae’s mother brings him home over her husband’s objections (Ella Mae’s older brother, Daniel, also died in the war). Every family in their Orange County town lost a member in the war, and most blame Takuma for their loss. He’s either shunned or subjected to vicious racist taunts. Only plucky Ella Mae, her mother, and cousin Gracie offer friendship and compassion, even as Takuma’s reconstructed body fails. With her folksy narration, both Ella Mae and the rural town’s simple, white Protestant inhabitants lack credibility as Californians. This ill-conceived novel is more than just ludicrously simplistic in its science; it portrays 1952 California as devoid of Japanese-Americans. Neither the text nor the author’s note mentions the thousands forced from their homes across the western United States, including towns and farms in Orange County, and incarcerated in concentration camps (two in California), nor do they mention the heroic 442nd Infantry Brigade, whose highly decorated Japanese-American soldiers fought for the Allies while their own families were imprisoned.
Numerous omissions and inaccuracies work against the earnest “war hurts everyone” message. (Historical fantasy. 10-13)Pub Date: May 5, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-399-16775-1
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Compulsively readable; morally uncomfortable.
Six New Jersey 12-year-olds separated by decades race to ensure the “good guys” win World War II in this middle-grade work by the author of The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants and her brother, a children's author and journalist.
It all starts with a ham radio that Alice, Lawrence, and Artie fool around with in 1944 and Henry, Frances, and Lukas find in 2023. It’s late April, and the 1944 kids worry about loved ones in combat, while the 2023 kids study the war in school. When, impossibly, the radio allows the kids to communicate across time, it doesn’t take long before they share information that changes history. Can the two sets of kids work across a 79-year divide to prevent the U.S.A. from becoming the Nazi-controlled dystopia of Westfallen? This propulsive thriller includes well-paced cuts between times that keep the pages turning. Like most people in their small New Jersey town, Alice, Artie, and Frances are white. In 1944, Lawrence, who’s Black, endures bigotry; in the U.S.A. of 2023, Henry’s biracial (white and Black) identity and Lukas’ Jewish one are unremarkable, but in Westfallen, Henry’s a “mischling” doing “work-learning,” and Lukas is a menial laborer. Alice’s and Henry’s dual first-person narration zooms in on the adventure, but readers who pull back may find themselves deeply uneasy with the summary consideration paid to the real-life fates of European Jews and disabled people. The cliffhanger ending will have them hoping for more thoughtful treatment in sequels to come.
Compulsively readable; morally uncomfortable. (Science fiction/thriller. 10-13)Pub Date: Sept. 17, 2024
ISBN: 9781665950817
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: June 15, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2024
A sly, side-splitting hoot from start to finish.
The dreary prospect of spending a lifetime making caskets instead of wonderful inventions prompts a young orphan to snatch up his little sister and flee. Where? To the circus, of course.
Fortunately or otherwise, John and 6-year-old Page join up with Boz—sometime human cannonball for the seedy Wandering Wayfarers and a “vertically challenged” trickster with a fantastic gift for sowing chaos. Alas, the budding engineer barely has time to settle in to begin work on an experimental circus wagon powered by chicken poop and dubbed (with questionable forethought) the Autopsy. The hot pursuit of malign and indomitable Great-Aunt Beauregard, the Coggins’ only living relative, forces all three to leave the troupe for further flights and misadventures. Teele spins her adventure around a sturdy protagonist whose love for his little sister is matched only by his fierce desire for something better in life for them both and tucks in an outstanding supporting cast featuring several notably strong-minded, independent women (Page, whose glare “would kill spiders dead,” not least among them). Better yet, in Boz she has created a scene-stealing force of nature, a free spirit who’s never happier than when he’s stirring up mischief. A climactic clutch culminating in a magnificently destructive display of fireworks leaves the Coggin sibs well-positioned for bright futures. (Illustrations not seen.)
A sly, side-splitting hoot from start to finish. (Adventure. 11-13)Pub Date: April 12, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-06-234510-3
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Walden Pond Press/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
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