An adequate portrait of an art-obsessed teen, but, unlike Vanessa, it doesn't stand out.
A self-proclaimed artist learns lessons about friendship, thoughtfulness and the importance of having something to say.
Restless, exuberant and brightly colored in pink hair and rainbow eye shadow, Vanessa knows she's not like the other “zombie kids” at her Seattle high school. Living with her Grampie and her dockworker mother, who settled down after becoming pregnant with her as a teenager, Vanessa longs for freedom and adulthood and assumes those around her do too (she constantly insists her mother should go on more dates, for instance). Readers instantly see the hurt she causes, despite her justifications, when Vanessa crosses boundaries to give the people in her life what she thinks they want—outing her gay best friend or spilling the beans to her shy musician friend Holly's crush. Her desire for new, transformative experiences is clear as she falls in with an older artist crowd and makes dubious, impulsive choices involving an older boy, a fake ID and a pinup calendar. The device of an art teacher helping her realize deeper truths about herself and her art feels familiar, and the insinuation that dyeing one's hair pink is merely a ploy for attention seems more like an adult's assumption than a teen's experience.
An adequate portrait of an art-obsessed teen, but, unlike Vanessa, it doesn't stand out. (Fiction. 12-14)Pub Date: May 10, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-375-84154-5
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Wendy Lamb/Random
Review Posted Online: April 18, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
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
A sweet yet thinly developed narrative.
Sylvie Jones is on her way to the Brindille School of Culinary Arts & Magic in this YA debut by a former Top Chef contestant.
Due to her mother’s alleged cheating years ago at the famed Golden Whisk—the biggest magical cooking competition around—Sylvie has been admitted only provisionally into Brindille’s six-week preparatory program. The Council of Culinary Sages has tasked her with proving her trustworthiness and talent by finishing first in her class. If Sylvie succeeds, she’ll be officially allowed to take the enrollment test. If she fails, she’ll be banned from “cooking up magic” altogether. Right before Sylvie arrives at Brindille, a mysterious stranger informs her that she’s part of a decades-old prophecy—her name is even written upon the Apple of Discord, a carefully guarded magical treasure borne by “a secret tree that only produce[s] fruit in times of great danger.” Now Sylvie is even more determined to succeed and clear her family’s name. While the overarching plot might hold the attention of ardent fans of magic school stories, the execution falls flat. Experienced genre readers will be disappointed to find that the narrative lacks depth and relies on cliched idioms and tired wordplay, and the culinary elements of the magical world are in need of more robust worldbuilding. Sylvie is cued white, and there’s diversity among the supporting characters.
A sweet yet thinly developed narrative. (recipes) (Fantasy. 12-14)Pub Date: Dec. 9, 2025
ISBN: 9798890033635
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Page Street
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2025
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