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THE MEMORY WALL

Name: THE MEMORY WALL
Author: Lev AC Rosen
ISBN: 978-1-101-93323-7

by Lev AC Rosen ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 13, 2016

Thoughtful, earnest, and gratifying.

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Just as his mother enters a nursing home with early-onset Alzheimer’s disease, a biracial (black and white) seventh-grade boy finds solace in a complex video game.

Nick Reeves hates everything about the day that his white mom goes to be “locked up” at Sunrise House. He’s so convinced that she’s been misdiagnosed that he keeps a log of her Alzheimer’s symptoms, hoping to disprove his parents’ conclusions. His preoccupation with his mother’s status even leads him to choose exploring her roots in East Berlin for a school history project despite the fact that his historian father’s books on the African-American experience would make researching that side of his family a snap. Meanwhile, in his persona as a gray elf treasure hunter/explorer named Severkin in the video game “Wellhall,” Nick encounters an older gray elf, Reunne, who he is convinced is his mother, trying to reveal to him the truth of her past and future. At the game’s memory wall Reunne declares: “This is my family, my history. This is everything I am.” Rosen adeptly explores memory and personal history as well as the loneliness of losing a parent, the complexity of biracial origins, and the metaphors of a quest and a divided city. While the story is occasionally heavy-handed and repetitious, readers—gamers and nongamers alike—will cheer the resolution of Nick’s transformative journey.

Thoughtful, earnest, and gratifying. (Fiction. 9-12)

Pub Date: Sept. 13, 2016

ISBN: 978-1-101-93323-7

Page Count: 368

Publisher: Knopf

Review Posted Online: May 31, 2016

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2016

Categories:

CHILDREN'S SOCIAL THEMES | CHILDREN'S FAMILY

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CLUES TO THE UNIVERSE

by Christina Li ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 12, 2021

Charming, poignant, and thoughtfully woven.

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An aspiring scientist and a budding artist become friends and help each other with dream projects.

Unfolding in mid-1980s Sacramento, California, this story stars 12-year-olds Rosalind and Benjamin as first-person narrators in alternating chapters. Ro’s father, a fellow space buff, was killed by a drunk driver; the rocket they were working on together lies unfinished in her closet. As for Benji, not only has his best friend, Amir, moved away, but the comic book holding the clue for locating his dad is also missing. Along with their profound personal losses, the protagonists share a fixation with the universe’s intriguing potential: Ro decides to complete the rocket and hopes to launch mementos of her father into outer space while Benji’s conviction that aliens and UFOs are real compels his imagination and creativity as an artist. An accident in science class triggers a chain of events forcing Benji and Ro, who is new to the school, to interact and unintentionally learn each other’s secrets. They resolve to find Benji’s dad—a famous comic-book artist—and partner to finish Ro’s rocket for the science fair. Together, they overcome technical, scheduling, and geographical challenges. Readers will be drawn in by amusing and fantastical elements in the comic book theme, high emotional stakes that arouse sympathy, and well-drawn character development as the protagonists navigate life lessons around grief, patience, self-advocacy, and standing up for others. Ro is biracial (Chinese/White); Benji is White.

Charming, poignant, and thoughtfully woven. (Fiction. 9-12)

Pub Date: Jan. 12, 2021

ISBN: 978-0-06-300888-5

Page Count: 304

Publisher: Quill Tree Books/HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: Oct. 26, 2020

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2020

Categories:

CHILDREN'S FAMILY | CHILDREN'S SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY | CHILDREN'S SOCIAL THEMES

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NUMBER THE STARS

by Lois Lowry ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 1, 1989

A deftly told story that dramatizes how Danes appointed themselves bodyguards—not only for their king, who was in the habit...

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The author of the Anastasia books as well as more serious fiction (Rabble Starkey, 1987) offers her first historical fiction—a story about the escape of the Jews from Denmark in 1943.

Five years younger than Lisa in Carol Matas' Lisa's War (1989), Annemarie Johansen has, at 10, known three years of Nazi occupation. Though ever cautious and fearful of the ubiquitous soldiers, she is largely unaware of the extent of the danger around her; the Resistance kept even its participants safer by telling them as little as possible, and Annemarie has never been told that her older sister Lise died in its service. When the Germans plan to round up the Jews, the Johansens take in Annemarie's friend, Ellen Rosen, and pretend she is their daughter; later, they travel to Uncle Hendrik's house on the coast, where the Rosens and other Jews are transported by fishing boat to Sweden. Apart from Lise's offstage death, there is little violence here; like Annemarie, the reader is protected from the full implications of events—but will be caught up in the suspense and menace of several encounters with soldiers and in Annemarie's courageous run as courier on the night of the escape. The book concludes with the Jews' return, after the war, to homes well kept for them by their neighbors.

A deftly told story that dramatizes how Danes appointed themselves bodyguards—not only for their king, who was in the habit of riding alone in Copenhagen, but for their Jews. (Historical fiction. 9-12)