A determined Chinese girl pursues her dream of a medical education by leaving her family and attending a university in America in the early 1920s. A companion to Namioka’s Ties that Bind, Ties that Break (1999), this opens with Yanyan’s journey to Shanghai to bid farewell to the earlier novel’s heroine as she embarks for San Francisco. The journey sets up the character’s central conflict: even as she envies her friend for her opportunities, she finds herself attracted to a charismatic friend of her Elder Brother’s, and finds that she must choose between her personal ambitions and her admirer. A melodramatic plot twist aids her choice—her admirer turns out to be part of a conspiracy to return the Manchu emperor to the throne—and off she goes to Cornell, where she encounters cultural difficulties aplenty. While the first-person narration is burdened by awkward historical summaries (“After our defeat in the Second Opium War, various countries discovered how weak China really was”), Yanyan’s struggles in the US are compelling. A patronizing student adviser tries to steer her toward home economics and away from physics (“Here at Cornell, we teach young ladies all the womanly arts in order to make them proper wives and mothers”). At the Chinese laundry, she is mistaken for an employee; when corrected, the customer says, “Well, I’ll be doggoned! I did hear there were Chinks at the university.” Despite these narrative flaws, Yanyan emerges as a highly sympathetic character for whom the reader will find herself rooting as she picks her way through her internal doubts and the obstacles set before her by both Chinese and American cultures. An author’s note provides some background on a particularly exciting and turbulent time in Chinese history. (Fiction. 12-16)
Pub Date: June 11, 2002
ISBN: 0-385-73002-0
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2002
Certain to provoke controversy and difficult to see as a book for children, who could easily miss the painful point.
After Hitler appoints Bruno’s father commandant of Auschwitz, Bruno (nine) is unhappy with his new surroundings compared to the luxury of his home in Berlin.
The literal-minded Bruno, with amazingly little political and social awareness, never gains comprehension of the prisoners (all in “striped pajamas”) or the malignant nature of the death camp. He overcomes loneliness and isolation only when he discovers another boy, Shmuel, on the other side of the camp’s fence. For months, the two meet, becoming secret best friends even though they can never play together. Although Bruno’s family corrects him, he childishly calls the camp “Out-With” and the Fuhrer “Fury.” As a literary device, it could be said to be credibly rooted in Bruno’s consistent, guileless characterization, though it’s difficult to believe in reality. The tragic story’s point of view is unique: the corrosive effect of brutality on Nazi family life as seen through the eyes of a naïf. Some will believe that the fable form, in which the illogical may serve the objective of moral instruction, succeeds in Boyne’s narrative; others will believe it was the wrong choice.
Certain to provoke controversy and difficult to see as a book for children, who could easily miss the painful point. (Fiction. 12-14)Pub Date: Sept. 12, 2006
ISBN: 0-385-75106-0
Page Count: 224
Publisher: David Fickling/Random
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2006
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
At the end of the term, a new student who is black and Vietnamese finds a morsel of hope that she too will find a place in...
This is almost like a play for 18 voices, as Grimes (Stepping Out with Grandma Mac, not reviewed, etc.) moves her narration among a group of high school students in the Bronx.
The English teacher, Mr. Ward, accepts a set of poems from Wesley, his response to a month of reading poetry from the Harlem Renaissance. Soon there’s an open-mike poetry reading, sponsored by Mr. Ward, every month, and then later, every week. The chapters in the students’ voices alternate with the poems read by that student, defiant, shy, terrified. All of them, black, Latino, white, male, and female, talk about the unease and alienation endemic to their ages, and they do it in fresh and appealing voices. Among them: Janelle, who is tired of being called fat; Leslie, who finds friendship in another who has lost her mom; Diondra, who hides her art from her father; Tyrone, who has faith in words and in his “moms”; Devon, whose love for books and jazz gets jeers. Beyond those capsules are rich and complex teens, and their tentative reaching out to each other increases as through the poems they also find more of themselves. Steve writes: “But hey! Joy / is not a crime, though / some people / make it seem so.”
At the end of the term, a new student who is black and Vietnamese finds a morsel of hope that she too will find a place in the poetry. (Fiction. 12-15)Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-8037-2569-8
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2001
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