Better suited to poetry classrooms than science labs.
Poetry + anatomy and physiology = an unusual combination.
Bulion has taken a series of poetry styles—sonnet, limerick, haiku, concrete poem, cinquain—as well as various rhyming schemes and uses them to provide brief, riddlelike descriptions of various organs of the human body. Although the first poem tells readers, “Some riddles will seem cinchy, / Some challengingly tough,” the answers are revealed on the same pages as the poems appear, making the guessing quite simple all the way through. Some of the spreads include humorous, cartoony illustrations, while others feature close-up or even microscopic photographic images, none of which are explicitly identified. Detailed “Poetry Notes” provide useful explanations of the styles and rhyming patterns of the poems. She relates each of them to the works of Shakespeare, although the audience that might most enjoy the hyperbole of the poems and images and the riddle format is unlikely to have yet acquired much knowledge of the Bard. The poem on teeth says, “A full set’s eight and twenty more,” although the explanation at the bottom of the page correctly identifies the number of permanent teeth as 32. While it’s hard not to admire the ick factor of couplets like, “Spuds unearthed from mud, then fried, / Mucus oozed from deep inside,” to describe the workings of the stomach, the audience for this effort may be limited.
Better suited to poetry classrooms than science labs. (Poetry. 9-12)Pub Date: March 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-56145-737-3
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Peachtree
Review Posted Online: Jan. 9, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2015
A powerfully candid and soulful account of an immigrant experience.
A Taiwanese family tries their luck in America.
In this verse novel, it’s 1980, and nearly 11-year-old Ai Shi and her mother prepare to leave Taipei to join her father in California, where he is pursuing a business opportunity with a friend. The extended family send them off, telling Ai Shi she’s so lucky to go to the “beautiful country”—the literal translation of the Chinese name for the U.S. Once they are reunited with Ba, he reveals that they have instead poured their savings into a restaurant in the remote Los Angeles County town of Duarte. Ma and Ba need to learn to cook American food, but at least, despite a betrayal by Ba’s friend, they have their own business. However, the American dream loses its shine as language barriers, isolation, financial stress, and racism take their toll. Ai Shi internalizes her parents’ disappointment in their new country by staying silent about bullying at school and her own unmet needs. Her letters home to her favorite cousin, Mei, maintain that all is well. After a year of enduring unrelenting challenges, including vandalism by local teens, the family reaches its breaking point. Hope belatedly arrives in the form of community allies and a change of luck. Kuo deftly touches on complex issues, such as the human cost of the history between China and Taiwan as well as the socio-economic prejudices and identity issues within Asian American communities.
A powerfully candid and soulful account of an immigrant experience. (Verse historical fiction. 9-12)Pub Date: June 28, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-06-311898-0
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Quill Tree Books/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 28, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
This suspenseful, undersea dystopia should keep middle schoolers hooked.
Several centuries after global warming has devastated the planet, a tyrannical government has taken control of the West Coast of America.
In a small seaside community in what was Southern California, Nere lives with her scientist mother and a pod of trained dolphins. Unbeknownst to Nere, her parents have genetically engineered her and several other children to breathe under water so they can live free there someday. When the government announces its intention to move the entire community inland, Nere’s mother finishes the alterations on the children and sends them away into the sea, where they will try to join Nere’s father’s colony for these new “Neptune children.” Nere and her friends, along with their friendly dolphins, must make their way there under the sea while fighting sharks and avoiding capture by government forces. They communicate telepathically, and Nere is even able to talk with the dolphins. Together with other Neptune children from Southern California, they head north, hiding and fighting all the way. Holyoke keeps her prose well-pitched to her audience, providing enough violence and even death to create suspense but muting it appropriately. She creates an interesting and diverse set of characters, including the dolphins. The science-fiction elements are nothing new, but they are built on good information about oceanography.
This suspenseful, undersea dystopia should keep middle schoolers hooked. (Science fiction. 9-12)Pub Date: May 21, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-4231-5756-4
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Disney-Hyperion
Review Posted Online: March 19, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
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