Emergency safety advice laced with teen banter makes for a quick read.
A real disaster follows a competitive one for an Arizona teen.
After Tyler freezes during his turn in the state high school speech tournament, causing his team to lose the competition, the bus ride home is pretty uncomfortable. The white teen is sulking by himself when the team’s school bus breaks down in the middle of the Arizona desert. Stranded several miles from their home city of Phoenix, the students, coach, and driver are forced to wait out what looks to be a brutal oncoming dust storm, as the second relief bus will not arrive in time. Instead of waiting safely on the bus, one teammate, a cocky know-it-all, decides to leave the group and run toward the city, without the consent of the coach. Knowing this is a dangerous move and hoping to save their teammate, Tyler and his dark-skinned crush, Julia, sneak off to go get L.J. and bring him back. The two find L.J., who has fallen and twisted his ankle. They make it back to the bus in time, and the students seal themselves in the bus as the titular black blizzard blows in. Though the story takes its time getting to the action, once the storm starts, it reads like a tutorial on how to survive it, making for absorbing reading. Others series entries publishing simultaneously include Deep Freeze, also by Johnson, and Backfire and Vortex, both by Vanessa Acton.
Emergency safety advice laced with teen banter makes for a quick read. (Adventure. 12-16)Pub Date: March 1, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-5124-3093-6
Page Count: 112
Publisher: Darby Creek
Review Posted Online: Jan. 31, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
Though it lacks references or suggestions for further reading, Arn's agonizing story is compelling enough that many readers...
A harrowing tale of survival in the Killing Fields.
The childhood of Arn Chorn-Pond has been captured for young readers before, in Michelle Lord and Shino Arihara's picture book, A Song for Cambodia (2008). McCormick, known for issue-oriented realism, offers a fictionalized retelling of Chorn-Pond's youth for older readers. McCormick's version begins when the Khmer Rouge marches into 11-year-old Arn's Cambodian neighborhood and forces everyone into the country. Arn doesn't understand what the Khmer Rouge stands for; he only knows that over the next several years he and the other children shrink away on a handful of rice a day, while the corpses of adults pile ever higher in the mango grove. Arn does what he must to survive—and, wherever possible, to protect a small pocket of children and adults around him. Arn's chilling history pulls no punches, trusting its readers to cope with the reality of children forced to participate in murder, torture, sexual exploitation and genocide. This gut-wrenching tale is marred only by the author's choice to use broken English for both dialogue and description. Chorn-Pond, in real life, has spoken eloquently (and fluently) on the influence he's gained by learning English; this prose diminishes both his struggle and his story.
Though it lacks references or suggestions for further reading, Arn's agonizing story is compelling enough that many readers will seek out the history themselves. (preface, author's note) (Historical fiction. 12-15)Pub Date: May 8, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-06-173093-1
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Balzer + Bray/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 20, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2012
Despite the stale fat-to-curvy pattern, compelling world building with a Southern European, pseudo-Christian feel,...
Adventure drags our heroine all over the map of fantasyland while giving her the opportunity to use her smarts.
Elisa—Princess Lucero-Elisa de Riqueza of Orovalle—has been chosen for Service since the day she was born, when a beam of holy light put a Godstone in her navel. She's a devout reader of holy books and is well-versed in the military strategy text Belleza Guerra, but she has been kept in ignorance of world affairs. With no warning, this fat, self-loathing princess is married off to a distant king and is embroiled in political and spiritual intrigue. War is coming, and perhaps only Elisa's Godstone—and knowledge from the Belleza Guerra—can save them. Elisa uses her untried strategic knowledge to always-good effect. With a character so smart that she doesn't have much to learn, body size is stereotypically substituted for character development. Elisa’s "mountainous" body shrivels away when she spends a month on forced march eating rat, and thus she is a better person. Still, it's wonderfully refreshing to see a heroine using her brain to win a war rather than strapping on a sword and charging into battle.
Despite the stale fat-to-curvy pattern, compelling world building with a Southern European, pseudo-Christian feel, reminiscent of Naomi Kritzer's Fires of the Faithful (2002), keeps this entry fresh. (Fantasy. 12-14)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-06-202648-4
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Greenwillow Books
Review Posted Online: July 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2011
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