Engrossing, entertaining, and heartfelt.
A girl fends for herself in Revolutionary War–era Boston.
Boston, 1776: 13-year-old Elsbeth Culpepper, a kitchen maid for a British loyalist judge, hunkers down during the chaos of George Washington’s violent siege on Boston. When the British are driven out and Elspeth’s sailmaker father—her only surviving family member after her mother and siblings died from smallpox—goes missing, Elsbeth is left to navigate an uncertain future on her own. She finds employment with former Patriot spy Mister Pike and his family, who have moved into the judge’s vacated home. Elsbeth is once more a maid, this time to the six Pike children and Hannah Sparhawk, the family’s sharp-witted, highborn charge. With the help of best friend Shubel Kent, Elsbeth searches for Pappa even as the city is ravaged by an explosion in smallpox numbers and a new government forms amid talk of independence. As she cares for the Pike family during their recovery from smallpox inoculation, Elsbeth must protect her own interests against outside forces, including the Pikes’ bitter housekeeper and a disreputable acquaintance of her father’s, all the while forming a friendship with Hannah and staying true to herself. Told through Elsbeth’s clever, feminist, often-humorous perspective, this original and timely story immerses readers in her observations on an epidemic and vaccination, early American politics and society, and the meaning of family. The main characters are white; the book contains references to enslaved people.
Engrossing, entertaining, and heartfelt. (map, bibliography, sources and references) (Historical fiction. 10-14)Pub Date: April 1, 2025
ISBN: 9781416968269
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Caitlyn Dlouhy/Atheneum
Review Posted Online: Dec. 28, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2025
Riveting, inspiring, and sometimes hilarious.
If you made a recording to be heard by the aliens who found the iPod, what would you record?
For 11-year-old Alex Petroski, it's easy. He records everything. He records the story of how he travels to New Mexico to a rocket festival with his dog, Carl Sagan, and his rocket. He records finding out that a man with the same name and birthday as his dead father has an address in Las Vegas. He records eating at Johnny Rockets for the first time with his new friends, who are giving him a ride to find his dead father (who might not be dead!), and losing Carl Sagan in the wilds of Las Vegas, and discovering he has a half sister. He even records his own awful accident. Cheng delivers a sweet, soulful debut novel with a brilliant, refreshing structure. His characters manage to come alive through the “transcript” of Alex’s iPod recording, an odd medium that sounds like it would be confusing but really works. Taking inspiration from the Voyager Golden Record released to space in 1977, Alex, who explains he has “light brown skin,” records all the important moments of a journey that takes him from a family of two to a family of plenty.
Riveting, inspiring, and sometimes hilarious. (Fiction. 10-14)Pub Date: Feb. 28, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-399-18637-0
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: Oct. 18, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
Poignant, respectful, and historically accurate while pulsating with emotional turmoil, adventure, and suspense.
In the midst of political turmoil, how do you escape the only country that you’ve ever known and navigate a new life? Parallel stories of three different middle school–aged refugees—Josef from Nazi Germany in 1938, Isabel from 1994 Cuba, and Mahmoud from 2015 Aleppo—eventually intertwine for maximum impact.
Three countries, three time periods, three brave protagonists. Yet these three refugee odysseys have so much in common. Each traverses a landscape ruled by a dictator and must balance freedom, family, and responsibility. Each initially leaves by boat, struggles between visibility and invisibility, copes with repeated obstacles and heart-wrenching loss, and gains resilience in the process. Each third-person narrative offers an accessible look at migration under duress, in which the behavior of familiar adults changes unpredictably, strangers exploit the vulnerabilities of transients, and circumstances seem driven by random luck. Mahmoud eventually concludes that visibility is best: “See us….Hear us. Help us.” With this book, Gratz accomplishes a feat that is nothing short of brilliant, offering a skillfully wrought narrative laced with global and intergenerational reverberations that signal hope for the future. Excellent for older middle grade and above in classrooms, book groups, and/or communities looking to increase empathy for new and existing arrivals from afar.
Poignant, respectful, and historically accurate while pulsating with emotional turmoil, adventure, and suspense. (maps, author’s note) (Historical fiction. 10-14)Pub Date: July 25, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-545-88083-1
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: May 9, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2017
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