Eleven-year-old Theresa Marks and her father are in friendly competition with their neighbor, Mr. Burt, over their tomato crops. Theresa understands that the battle to produce the best tomato is meant to be a distraction from more serious matters: WWII is in full gear and Theresa’s brother Jeff is an Air Corps pilot. But planting a victory garden is more than a diversion; it is also a patriotic duty. So when Mr. Burt is injured in an accident and can no longer tend his huge garden, Theresa enlists her classmates in a campaign to weed, water, harvest, and sell the produce. Theresa has her hands full keeping her friends motivated to do the hard work of gardening, worrying about her brother, and dealing with Billy Riggs, the combative class outcast. Theresa and her friends and family must face the cruel consequences of war in ways that hit increasingly close to home, but there is never any doubt about the necessity of sacrifice for a just cause. It may interest young people to read about a time when America was engaged in a war in which every child had either a brother, a father, or a neighbor doing battle and when kids could be enticed into back-breaking work for the sake of patriotism and an ice cream cone. While first-time author Kochenderfer’s characters seem impossibly earnest and optimistic, not to mention corny with exclamations of “hot diggety,” this is an engaging read. (Fiction. 9-12)
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-385-32788-9
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2001
Though occasionally heavy-handed, this debut offers a vivid glimpse of the 1960s South through the eyes of a spirited girl...
The closing of her favorite swimming pool opens 11-year-old Gloriana Hemphill’s eyes to the ugliness of racism in a small Mississippi town in 1964.
Glory can’t believe it… the Hanging Moss Community Pool is closing right before her July Fourth birthday. Not only that, she finds out the closure’s not for the claimed repairs needed, but so Negroes can’t swim there. Tensions have been building since “Freedom Workers” from the North started shaking up status quo, and Glory finds herself embroiled in it when her new, white friend from Ohio boldly drinks from the “Colored Only” fountain. The Hemphills’ African-American maid, Emma, a mother figure to Glory and her sister Jesslyn, tells her, “Don’t be worrying about what you can’t fix, Glory honey.” But Glory does, becoming an activist herself when she writes an indignant letter to the newspaper likening “hateful prejudice” to “dog doo” that makes her preacher papa proud. When she’s not saving the world, reading Nancy Drew or eating Dreamsicles, Glory shares the heartache of being the kid sister of a preoccupied teenager, friendship gone awry and the terrible cost of blabbing people’s secrets… mostly in a humorously sassy first-person voice.
Though occasionally heavy-handed, this debut offers a vivid glimpse of the 1960s South through the eyes of a spirited girl who takes a stand. (Historical fiction. 9-12)Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-545-33180-7
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Sept. 27, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Japanese-American Aki and her family operate an asparagus farm in Westminster, Calif., until they are summarily uprooted and...
Two third-grade girls in California suffer the dehumanizing effects of racial segregation after the Japanese attack Pearl Harbor in 1942 in this moving story based on true events in the lives of Sylvia Mendez and Aki Munemitsu.
Japanese-American Aki and her family operate an asparagus farm in Westminster, Calif., until they are summarily uprooted and dispatched to an internment camp in Poston, Ariz., for the duration of World War II. As Aki endures the humiliation and deprivation of the hot, cramped barracks, she wonders if there’s “something wrong with being Japanese.” Sylvia’s Mexican-American family leases the Munemitsu farm. She expects to attend the local school but faces disappointment when authorities assign her to a separate, second-rate school for Mexican kids. In response, Sylvia’s father brings a legal action against the school district arguing against segregation in what eventually becomes a successful landmark case. Their lives intersect after Sylvia finds Aki’s doll, meets her in Poston and sends her letters. Working with material from interviews, Conkling alternates between Aki and Sylvia’s stories, telling them in the third person from the war’s start in 1942 through its end in 1945, with an epilogue updating Sylvia’s story to 1955.Pub Date: July 12, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-58246-337-7
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Tricycle
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2011
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