bookshelf

UNCHAINED

Name: UNCHAINED
Author: L. B. Tillit
ISBN: 978-1-61651-7-922

by L. B. Tillit ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 1, 2012

Despite a few oversimplifications, this is a thoughtful and accessible story about the many meanings—positive and...

bookshelf

In an unnamed city, the son of drug-addicted parents finds a loving foster home, then loses everything.

Part of the publisher's Gravel Road line, which produces a junior version of “urban street lit” aimed at reluctant readers, the book is attractively packaged with a photographic cover, a small trim and plenty of white space on its pages. Sentences are short and vocabulary simple, but narrator TJ's voice is expressive, even though some complexity is sacrificed to move the story forward. TJ's ambivalence toward his family is clear from the first evocative scene, in which a fight between 5-year-old TJ and his father ends in laughter. His relationship to the Hillside Vipers, a gang that recruits TJ when he is 13, also rings true: TJ joins the gang because he is afraid not to. The emotional center of the book is Miss Dixie, the boundlessly warm proprietor of a group home where TJ lives after the state separates him from his family. Although the redemptive relationships TJ builds at Miss Dixie's are compelling, Miss Dixie's promise that TJ “will always have a place here” seems hard to believe, given how many young people need foster care.

Despite a few oversimplifications, this is a thoughtful and accessible story about the many meanings—positive and negative—of family. (Fiction. 12-15)

Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2012

ISBN: 978-1-61651-7-922

Page Count: 198

Publisher: Saddleback Educational Publishing

Review Posted Online: Dec. 13, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2012

Categories:

TEENS & YOUNG ADULT SOCIAL THEMES

bookshelf

BENITO RUNS

From the Surviving Southside series

by Justine Fontes ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2011

bookshelf

Each book in the high-interest/low-reading-level Surviving Southside series is narrated by a different student at Texas' racially diverse Southside High School. Here, Benito's dad comes home from the war in Iraq. The family has been looking forward to his return, but he now has PTSD and is prone to loud, embarrassing outbursts. Ultimately, Benito leaves the house on an ill-fated bus journey. Plan B, in which a drunken first sexual experience leads to an unplanned pregnancy, tells a familiar story but comes to an open-ended resolution. In Recruited, star quarterback Kadeem faces a moral dilemma: Accept the scholarships, academic string-pulling and cheerleaders' attention offered by Teller College's recruiting coach, or blow the whistle on Teller's illegal recruiting practices. Each book is straightforward, with action beginning immediately and every detail moving the story ahead. Resolutions come quickly (each volume hovers just around 100 pages) and are sometimes unsatisfyingly tidy. Occasionally, a relevant detail is left out—it is never explained, for instance, why NCAA recruiting rules forbid aggressive tactics—but overall, these are solid, simple stories. For reluctant readers and fans of the Bluford High series. (Fiction. 12-14)

Pub Date: March 1, 2011

ISBN: 978-0-7613-6165-7

Page Count: 104

Publisher: Darby Creek

Review Posted Online: April 6, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2011

Categories:

TEENS & YOUNG ADULT SOCIAL THEMES

- BOOK REVIEW
BLACK MEETS WHITE
by Justine Fontes & illustrated by Geoff Waring

bookshelf

SMALL ACTS OF AMAZING COURAGE

by Gloria Whelan ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 19, 2011

bookshelf

With her father away fighting Turks and her mother so often “under the weather,” still grieving over long-dead son Edward, 15-year-old Rosalind James has grown independent visiting the bazaar with her Indian friend, Isha, and causing comment among the other British officers’ wives at the club. Rosalind’s headstrong and helpful nature gets her into trouble quickly when her father returns from the front in 1919. He fires a man too old to sweep the family house, and the old sweeper sells his grandchild to feed the family. Rosalind saves the baby but nearly finds herself sent to England for a proper education. Only her mother’s fear that Rosalind will die as Edward did allows Rosalind to stay in her beloved India. However, when she becomes interested in what the famous Gandhi is preaching (not to mention the handsome Max Nelson); Major James packs Rosalind off to live with her aunts. How will a girl raised in India survive the cold climes of a homeland she’s never visited? What will her sweet Aunt Louise and her prickly Aunt Ethyl make of their impetuous niece? National Book Award winner Whelan’s characters are more types than people, and there is little of the flavor of the subcontinent in this overstuffed, occasionally pleasant tale of a plucky young woman in Raj-era India. (Historical fiction. 12-14)