by Laura Scalzo ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 5, 2018
An enjoyable story of teen independence and exploration.
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In Scalzo’s debut novel, a teenager skips a STEM competition to pursue her own interests.
Fifteen-year-old Julia Bissette is an aficionado of fractals (“You can draw a circle with geometry, but you can draw a snowflake with fractal geometry”). She’d initially planned to go to a national conference that awards a monetary prize to the best fractal diagram produced by one of its young entrants. Instead, she spends a Holden Caulfield–esque week exploring her hometown of Washington, D.C., on her own terms. She uses her father’s credit card to check into the Hay-Adams Hotel, and at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, Julia meets Kal Kovac, a tall teenage boy trying to solve the mystery of why his grandfather never returned from the war. Julia and Kal hit it off, and they team up to investigate his relative’s past—a journey that takes them to the National Archives, CIA headquarters, and, eventually, to the very competition that Julia’s been avoiding. The present-day chapters are intercut with excerpts from Kal’s grandfather’s journal, including an account of his work during secret missions in Laos, and both narratives reach their resolutions in the book’s closing pages. Julia is a compelling protagonist who’s both self-aware and self-indulgent (“I guess I might be in trouble, but for what?”). Indeed, readers may have trouble deciding whether they want to root for her or shake some sense into her. Her relationship with Kal is refreshing, as it doesn’t instantly transform into a romance; they’re strangers united by a cause rather than sudden soul mates. Scalzo knows her District of Columbia setting well, and she develops it in detail throughout the story, allowing both Julia and the reader to become reacquainted with a familiar place. The prose is strong—quiet but evocative—and it does an excellent job of capturing the unanswered questions that drive Julia and Kal: “His isn’t a war story I understand from school and field trips, a Civil War soldier breathing his last breath, Walt Whitman holding his hand at the Patent Office, not even a mile from the White House and President Lincoln himself.”
An enjoyable story of teen independence and exploration.Pub Date: Oct. 5, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-73269-400-2
Page Count: 206
Publisher: One One Two Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 16, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by J.D. Salinger ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 15, 1951
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
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by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2006
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
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