Young readers, including reluctant ones, will be rooting for Jake.
A surprisingly affecting portrait of a 10-year-old boy in 1885 who is sentenced to five years for manslaughter and sent to the Idaho Territorial Penitentiary.
Inspired by a real incident reported in an Idaho newspaper on May 2, 1885,
Pileggi convincingly creates a story of a resilient, not-really-aware-that-he’s-neglected, illiterate boy with a big heart. Jake struggles to comprehend and survive a harsh prison setting that was never set up to include juveniles. And yet “I was settled in just fine,” thanks in part to the kindly warden who arranges for him to work on a hog farm and take reading lessons from a fellow prisoner and to “eating a heaped-up tray of food every darned day.” Told from Jake’s point of view in the first person, this fast-paced, absorbing debut covers approximately nine months. Jake, aka “prisoner 88,” is attacked on several occasions and, during an attempted escape of two of the prisoners, does what he thinks is right, with unforeseen consequences. He takes his job tending the hogs seriously and witnesses both the birth of a litter of piglets and a slaughter. And, against all odds, he develops a community of sorts—a young guard, the farm family, several prisoners, a cat....Mystery surrounds his own story—what happened that day in the saloon when his Pa was threatened and a gun went off, killing the owner; was an injustice done when Jake was convicted?
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-58089-560-6
Page Count: 144
Publisher: Charlesbridge
Review Posted Online: April 23, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2013
Characteristically provocative gothic comedy, with sublime undertones. (Autobiographical fiction. 11-13)
An exhilarating summer marked by death, gore and fire sparks deep thoughts in a small-town lad not uncoincidentally named “Jack Gantos.”
The gore is all Jack’s, which to his continuing embarrassment “would spray out of my nose holes like dragon flames” whenever anything exciting or upsetting happens. And that would be on every other page, seemingly, as even though Jack’s feuding parents unite to ground him for the summer after several mishaps, he does get out. He mixes with the undertaker’s daughter, a band of Hell’s Angels out to exact fiery revenge for a member flattened in town by a truck and, especially, with arthritic neighbor Miss Volker, for whom he furnishes the “hired hands” that transcribe what becomes a series of impassioned obituaries for the local paper as elderly town residents suddenly begin passing on in rapid succession. Eventually the unusual body count draws the—justified, as it turns out—attention of the police. Ultimately, the obits and the many Landmark Books that Jack reads (this is 1962) in his hours of confinement all combine in his head to broaden his perspective about both history in general and the slow decline his own town is experiencing.
Characteristically provocative gothic comedy, with sublime undertones. (Autobiographical fiction. 11-13)Pub Date: Sept. 13, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-374-37993-3
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: April 5, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Who can't love a story about a Nigerian-American 12-year-old with albinism who discovers latent magical abilities and saves the world? Sunny lives in Nigeria after spending the first nine years of her life in New York. She can't play soccer with the boys because, as she says, "being albino made the sun my enemy," and she has only enemies at school. When a boy in her class, Orlu, rescues her from a beating, Sunny is drawn in to a magical world she's never known existed. Sunny, it seems, is a Leopard person, one of the magical folk who live in a world mostly populated by ignorant Lambs. Now she spends the day in mundane Lamb school and sneaks out at night to learn magic with her cadre of Leopard friends: a handsome American bad boy, an arrogant girl who is Orlu’s childhood friend and Orlu himself. Though Sunny's initiative is thin—she is pushed into most of her choices by her friends and by Leopard adults—the worldbuilding for Leopard society is stellar, packed with details that will enthrall readers bored with the same old magical worlds. Meanwhile, those looking for a touch of the familiar will find it in Sunny's biggest victories, which are entirely non-magical (the detailed dynamism of Sunny's soccer match is more thrilling than her magical world saving). Ebulliently original. (Fantasy. 11-13)
Pub Date: April 14, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-670-01196-4
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: March 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2011
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