by Laura Resau ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 27, 2015
This vibrant, intergenerational tale is nothing short of magical
A celebration of grandparents’ wisdom, cross-cultural friendship, and the idea that nothing is impossible.
In present-day Oaxaca, young Mateo visits his Grandpa Teo in his ancestral Mixteco hometown, the Hill of Dust, for the summer. Grandpa Teo shows Mateo a shiny string of coins and begins a story “of marvels. Of impossible fortunes....Of a girl who gathered power from storms and sang back the dead.” The lyrical narrative then rewinds to the 1950s, when a young Teo—a grandson of the village’s healer—first meets “Gypsy” girl Esma, who arrives with her family’s caravan to sing, show movies, read fortunes, and change his life. Taken with her beautiful voice and "aliveness," Teo strikes up a friendship with “Queen of Lightning” Esma that her fortuneteller grandmother predicts will not only last a lifetime, but also extend to their own grandchildren. Each year, the Romany return, and Teo and Esma resume sharing secrets, rescuing wounded animals, and even saving each other's lives. Inspired by the author’s time living among the Mixteco, the heartfelt story shifts between timelines to reveal how Teo and Esma form a bond on the Hill of Dust that neither prejudice, time, nor distance can break. Backmatter includes a lengthy note that discusses the Mixteco and the Romany as well as glossaries and pronunciation guides for Mexican Spanish, Mixteco, and Romany words and phrases used in the text.
This vibrant, intergenerational tale is nothing short of magical . (Magical realism. 8-13)Pub Date: Oct. 27, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-545-80084-6
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: July 21, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2015
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by Louis Sachar ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 1, 1998
Good Guys and Bad get just deserts in the end, and Stanley gets plenty of opportunities to display pluck and valor in this...
Sentenced to a brutal juvenile detention camp for a crime he didn't commit, a wimpy teenager turns four generations of bad family luck around in this sunburnt tale of courage, obsession, and buried treasure from Sachar (Wayside School Gets a Little Stranger, 1995, etc.).
Driven mad by the murder of her black beau, a schoolteacher turns on the once-friendly, verdant town of Green Lake, Texas, becomes feared bandit Kissin' Kate Barlow, and dies, laughing, without revealing where she buried her stash. A century of rainless years later, lake and town are memories—but, with the involuntary help of gangs of juvenile offenders, the last descendant of the last residents is still digging. Enter Stanley Yelnats IV, great-grandson of one of Kissin' Kate's victims and the latest to fall to the family curse of being in the wrong place at the wrong time; under the direction of The Warden, a woman with rattlesnake venom polish on her long nails, Stanley and each of his fellow inmates dig a hole a day in the rock-hard lake bed. Weeks of punishing labor later, Stanley digs up a clue, but is canny enough to conceal the information of which hole it came from. Through flashbacks, Sachar weaves a complex net of hidden relationships and well-timed revelations as he puts his slightly larger-than-life characters under a sun so punishing that readers will be reaching for water bottles.
Good Guys and Bad get just deserts in the end, and Stanley gets plenty of opportunities to display pluck and valor in this rugged, engrossing adventure. (Fiction. 9-13)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998
ISBN: 978-0-374-33265-5
Page Count: 233
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2000
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by Kate DiCamillo ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 5, 2024
Tenderly resonant and memorable.
Ferris finds herself in the midst of several love stories during the summer before fifth grade.
Emma Phineas Wilkey’s moniker comes from the circumstances of her birth: under the Ferris wheel at the fairground. Her contained world, centered around her family and best friend, is filled with kindness, humor, and singular personalities, while the indeterminate late-20th-century small-town setting feels like a safe place from which to observe heartbreak and loss. Ferris’ architect father and her pragmatic mother, on break from teaching high school math, anchor her home life, along with Pinky, her hilariously ferocious 6-year-old sister, and Charisse, her grandmother, who claims to have seen an unhappy ghost in their big old house. Ferris’ best friend, Billy Jackson, whom she’s loved since kindergarten, hears the music of the world: “The whole world is singing all the time.” Ferris, serious and sensitive, is attuned to the ways that the vocabulary words they learned in Mrs. Mielk’s fourth grade class describe moments in her life. DiCamillo’s gift for conveying an entire person and world in a few brushstrokes of storytelling provides depth and quiet magic to this account of an eventful summer in which a ghost is appeased, an outlaw (Pinky) is somewhat reformed, and an uncle and aunt are reconciled. Ferris experiences two surprising moments of transcendence and becomes aware of the ways love suffuses everything. Characters are cued white.
Tenderly resonant and memorable. (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: March 5, 2024
ISBN: 9781536231052
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: Dec. 6, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2024
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