Myracle revisits the story she told in Rhymes with Witches (p. 292), albeit in a less dark, more humorous world. Alli doesn’t think she’ll ever be popular again. On the very first day of seventh grade, she arrives at school with a pair of her mother’s underwear attached to her trousers by static cling. Her social life is limited to spending time with her unpleasant friend Kathy—the only person who was loyal when Alli was out sick for two months of sixth grade—and new friend Megan. For some reason, though, the trio of popular girls who rule the class decides to take Alli on as a project. Alli relishes her new popularity, but can’t figure out how to maintain it without abandoning Kathy and Megan. The popular girls aren’t very nice—but then, neither is Kathy. Unlike the nearly identically structured Rhymes with Witches, Alli’s story concludes with the possibility that she may finally be able to put things right. Good insights into the genuine unpleasantness of adolescence, but nothing new. (Fiction. 10-13)
Pub Date: July 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-525-47222-3
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2005
Categories: TEENS & YOUNG ADULT FICTION | TEENS & YOUNG ADULT SOCIAL THEMES
Did you like this book?
In a meditative interracial love story with a wrenching climactic twist, Woodson (The House You Pass on the Way, 1997, etc.) offers an appealing pair of teenagers and plenty of intellectual grist, before ending her story with a senseless act of violence.
Jeremiah and Elisha bond from the moment they collide in the hall of their Manhattan prep school: He’s the only child of celebrity parents; she’s the youngest by ten years in a large family. Not only sharply sensitive to the reactions of those around them, Ellie and Miah also discover depths and complexities in their own intense feelings that connect clearly to their experiences, their social environment, and their own characters. In quiet conversations and encounters, Woodson perceptively explores varieties of love, trust, and friendship, as she develops well-articulated histories for both families. Suddenly Miah, forgetting his father’s warning never to be seen running in a white neighborhood, exuberantly dashes into a park and is shot down by police. The parting thought that, willy-nilly, time moves on will be a colder comfort for stunned readers than it evidently is for Ellie.
Miah’s melodramatic death overshadows a tale as rich in social and personal insight as any of Woodson’s previous books. (Fiction. 11-13)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-399-23112-9
Page Count: 181
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1998
Categories: TEENS & YOUNG ADULT FICTION | TEENS & YOUNG ADULT SOCIAL THEMES
Did you like this book?
Curtis debuts with a ten-year-old's lively account of his teenaged brother's ups and downs. Ken tries to make brother Byron out to be a real juvenile delinquent, but he comes across as more of a comic figure: getting stuck to the car when he kisses his image in a frozen side mirror, terrorized by his mother when she catches him playing with matches in the bathroom, earning a shaved head by coming home with a conk. In between, he defends Ken from a bully and buries a bird he kills by accident. Nonetheless, his parents decide that only a long stay with tough Grandma Sands will turn him around, so they all motor from Michigan to Alabama, arriving in time to witness the infamous September bombing of a Sunday school. Ken is funny and intelligent, but he gives readers a clearer sense of Byron's character than his own and seems strangely unaffected by his isolation and harassment (for his odd look—he has a lazy eye—and high reading level) at school. Curtis tries to shoehorn in more characters and subplots than the story will comfortably bear—as do many first novelists—but he creates a well-knit family and a narrator with a distinct, believable voice. (Fiction. 10-12)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-385-32175-9
Page Count: 210
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1995
Did you like this book?
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
© Copyright 2021 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
