Strongly boy-centric, with sharp moral divides and some gruesome bits.
The summer before seventh grade holds major challenges for an East Texan boy in 1981—from having to choose between his accustomed posse and a chancier but more exciting one to recovering his memory after being mauled by a tiger.
In this debut, Noah Ellis, exposed to sudden notoriety as the amnesiac victim of an escaped zoo tiger, turns from his safe, old friends toward a set of popular boys a grade older who have reputations as bullies. A quaint sense of period pervades this tale—not simply because the girls and women are confined to limited, highly gendered roles but also because the boys and men are too. Between games of pinball and mini-golf, the toughs hang out in a clubhouse built in a tree and subject Noah to an elaborate initiation ritual after he tries to impress them the traditional way by stealing an adult magazine. When he sees how some casual vandalism that spirals out of control makes all their swagger and tough talk about loyalty evaporate in panicked flight, Noah reconsiders their ethos and makes a difficult decision about where true friendship lies. Readers may be inspired by his story to examine their own associations—and even if not, they’ll be riveted by the grisly, graphic events that Noah at last recalls from that traumatic night. Central characters present white.
Strongly boy-centric, with sharp moral divides and some gruesome bits. (Historical fiction. 12-14)Pub Date: Jan. 21, 2025
ISBN: 9781963511017
Page Count: 396
Publisher: Flare Books/Catalyst Press
Review Posted Online: March 8, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2025
Stands out neither as a folk-tale retelling, a coming-of-age story, nor a Holocaust novel.
A Holocaust tale with a thin “Hansel and Gretel” veneer from the author of The Devil’s Arithmetic (1988).
Chaim and Gittel, 14-year-old twins, live with their parents in the Lodz ghetto, forced from their comfortable country home by the Nazis. The siblings are close, sharing a sign-based twin language; Chaim stutters and communicates primarily with his sister. Though slowly starving, they make the best of things with their beloved parents, although it’s more difficult once they must share their tiny flat with an unpleasant interfaith couple and their Mischling (half-Jewish) children. When the family hears of their impending “wedding invitation”—the ghetto idiom for a forthcoming order for transport—they plan a dangerous escape. Their journey is difficult, and one by one, the adults vanish. Ultimately the children end up in a fictional child labor camp, making ammunition for the German war effort. Their story effectively evokes the dehumanizing nature of unremitting silence. Nevertheless, the dense, distancing narrative (told in a third-person contemporaneous narration focused through Chaim with interspersed snippets from Gittel’s several-decades-later perspective) has several consistency problems, mostly regarding the relative religiosity of this nominally secular family. One theme seems to be frustration with those who didn’t fight back against overwhelming odds, which makes for a confusing judgment on the suffering child protagonists.
Stands out neither as a folk-tale retelling, a coming-of-age story, nor a Holocaust novel. (author’s note) (Historical fiction. 12-14)Pub Date: March 6, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-399-25778-0
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Philomel
Review Posted Online: Dec. 20, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2018
Nineteenth-century tomboy Louisa Cosgrove wants to study medicine, but after her indulgent father's death, that dream seems impossibly distant. Her mother dispatches her to family friends, but Louisa never arrives. Instead, she is taken to Wildthorn Hall, an insane asylum. The staff insist her name is Lucy Childs, and her treatment ranges from the relatively benign (tranquilizers) to the horrific (sensory deprivation). The mystery of Louisa's incarceration is revealed through alternating chapters of her present and childhood: Like many of her fellow "patients," Louisa's been committed for being a troublesome woman. Luckily, her family doesn't know of those tendencies that would make her utterly irredeemable—her overly fond feelings for her beautiful cousin Grace. Unlike many of the other inmates, who seem to develop mental illness from the cruelty of their surroundings, Louisa is determined to escape, perhaps with the help of a lovely asylum employee, Eliza. Despite a too-pat ending, Louisa and Eliza provide a window into a shameful history of mental health care and women's incarceration that only ended in living memory. (Historical fiction. 12-14)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-547-37017-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2010
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