A tense, engrossing story that effectively captures the suspicion and paranoia that prevailed during American history’s...
This historical novel revisits the anxious, fearful time of the Cold War, when blacklists, political profiling, and guilt by association ruined the lives of thousands of innocent people and deeply divided the nation.
Elliott sets the story in 1953, when the Red Scare is at its peak. Julius and Ethel Rosenberg are executed for spying for the Soviet Union, the “Hollywood 10” are sentenced to prison for refusing to name names, and Sen. Joseph McCarthy recklessly exposes people he deems subversives and communist sympathizers. Richard, the teenage son of an FBI agent living in Washington, D.C., belongs to a white family of patriotic true believers in 1950s-era American values. When a family from Czechoslovakia moves in down the street, Richard befriends a son his age named Vlad, who shares his musical tastes and passion for literature. The family’s bold, unconventional ideas about art and politics prompt Richard to question many of his preconceived notions about patriotism. When Vlad’s father’s loyalty is questioned and comes under investigation, Richard is forced to confront his beliefs about friendship and betrayal. Interspersed throughout the narrative are photos, news headlines, ads, quotes, and political cartoons from the era that offer insightful historical context to the story in a documentary style that resembles that of Deborah Wiles’ novels Countdown (2010) and Revolution (2014).
A tense, engrossing story that effectively captures the suspicion and paranoia that prevailed during American history’s darkest chapters. (Historical fiction. 11-14)Pub Date: Sept. 19, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-4231-5754-0
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Disney-Hyperion
Review Posted Online: July 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A thoroughgoing ickfest, elevated by vulnerable but resilient young characters and capped by a righteously ominous closing...
A heartwarming friendship tale—played out amid carpets of chittering insects, torture both corporal and psychological, the odd bit of cannibalism and like ghoulish delights.
Being practically perfect in every way and someone who “never walked anywhere without extreme purpose,” 12-year-old Victoria resolutely sets about investigating the sudden disappearance of her scruffy classmate and longtime rehabilitation project Lawrence. After troubling encounters with several abruptly strange and wolfish adults in town, including her own parents, she finds herself borne into the titular Home by a swarm of 10-legged roachlike creatures. This abduction quickly leads to the discovery that it’s not an orphanage but a reform school. There, for generations, local children have had qualities deemed undesirable beaten or frightened out of them by sweet-looking, viciously psychotic magician/headmistress/monster bug Mrs. Cavendish. Victoria is challenged by a full array of terror-tale tropes, from disoriented feelings that things are “not quite right” and “[s]harp, invisible sensations, like reaching fingers” to dark passageways lined with rustling roaches and breakfast casseroles with chunks of…meat.
A thoroughgoing ickfest, elevated by vulnerable but resilient young characters and capped by a righteously ominous closing twist. (Horror fantasy. 11-13)Pub Date: Sept. 4, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-4424-4291-7
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Aug. 21, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2012
Short and simply told, but hard to follow and likely to have less meaning to children than to reflective older readers with...
A writer’s broken promise to a motherless child frames ruminations on story crafting and the sometimes conflicting imperatives of life and art.
In a shifting patchwork of narratives and points of view, Iranian author Akbarpour (Good Night, Commander, 2010) opens with a chance meeting between 5-year-old Banafsheh and a friendly, unnamed children’s writer who promises to call in a few days. When the call never comes, Banafsheh’s delight changes to feelings of anger and betrayal that simmer even after her loving father reads her one of the writer’s tales about a sundered friendship between a child and an old man. Meanwhile, the writer presents the original encounter as an open-ended story to a class of fifth-graders, and their sometimes poignant suggestions about what happens next prompt thoughts about how authors must sometimes be ruthless, even cruel in serving the demands of their work. But the revelation that the real friendship that inspired the other, embedded story took a different and happier course prompts the writer to make good on her promise at last—and even, in a fence-mending sacrifice, to destroy her manuscript.
Short and simply told, but hard to follow and likely to have less meaning to children than to reflective older readers with authorial ambitions of their own. (Fiction. 12-14, adult)Pub Date: Oct. 16, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-55498-169-4
Page Count: 96
Publisher: Groundwood
Review Posted Online: Aug. 21, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
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