A charming tale of sisterhood woven together with fashion, history, and subterfuge.
New maid Myrtle and Lady Sylvia are unlikely creative partners and friends who are nevertheless well matched for sewing and secret adventures.
It’s London in 1926, and Myrtle Mathers becomes a maid at Serendipity House after her father dies and her sick mother returns home to convalesce in Ireland. Myrtle and Sylvia, the younger lady of the house, find themselves working together to successfully remake a disastrous ball gown for her older sister, the debutante Lady Delphine. The team doesn’t stop there, next helping out Sylvia’s friend Lady Agapantha, who engages them in plotting her escape to explore the Amazon—disguised as a young man. The pair sets to work on a wardrobe full of trousers and a plan that includes deceit, breaking class ranks, and ignoring many of society’s expectations of young women. In the process, the girls have a chance to observe the privileges afforded to men as they simultaneously realize the disadvantages of being a woman, although the plan is slow to hit its crescendo and then seems to unravel almost too quickly at the end. However, this is a story full of women who almost universally welcome and encourage each other. The sketches of the clothing designs are fun and give young readers a sense of what 1920s clothing looked like. Characters are presumed White.
A charming tale of sisterhood woven together with fashion, history, and subterfuge. (Historical fiction. 9-12)Pub Date: April 27, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-593-20472-6
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Razorbill/Penguin
Review Posted Online: Feb. 8, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2021
Though occasionally heavy-handed, this debut offers a vivid glimpse of the 1960s South through the eyes of a spirited girl...
The closing of her favorite swimming pool opens 11-year-old Gloriana Hemphill’s eyes to the ugliness of racism in a small Mississippi town in 1964.
Glory can’t believe it… the Hanging Moss Community Pool is closing right before her July Fourth birthday. Not only that, she finds out the closure’s not for the claimed repairs needed, but so Negroes can’t swim there. Tensions have been building since “Freedom Workers” from the North started shaking up status quo, and Glory finds herself embroiled in it when her new, white friend from Ohio boldly drinks from the “Colored Only” fountain. The Hemphills’ African-American maid, Emma, a mother figure to Glory and her sister Jesslyn, tells her, “Don’t be worrying about what you can’t fix, Glory honey.” But Glory does, becoming an activist herself when she writes an indignant letter to the newspaper likening “hateful prejudice” to “dog doo” that makes her preacher papa proud. When she’s not saving the world, reading Nancy Drew or eating Dreamsicles, Glory shares the heartache of being the kid sister of a preoccupied teenager, friendship gone awry and the terrible cost of blabbing people’s secrets… mostly in a humorously sassy first-person voice.
Though occasionally heavy-handed, this debut offers a vivid glimpse of the 1960s South through the eyes of a spirited girl who takes a stand. (Historical fiction. 9-12)Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-545-33180-7
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Sept. 27, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Japanese-American Aki and her family operate an asparagus farm in Westminster, Calif., until they are summarily uprooted and...
Two third-grade girls in California suffer the dehumanizing effects of racial segregation after the Japanese attack Pearl Harbor in 1942 in this moving story based on true events in the lives of Sylvia Mendez and Aki Munemitsu.
Japanese-American Aki and her family operate an asparagus farm in Westminster, Calif., until they are summarily uprooted and dispatched to an internment camp in Poston, Ariz., for the duration of World War II. As Aki endures the humiliation and deprivation of the hot, cramped barracks, she wonders if there’s “something wrong with being Japanese.” Sylvia’s Mexican-American family leases the Munemitsu farm. She expects to attend the local school but faces disappointment when authorities assign her to a separate, second-rate school for Mexican kids. In response, Sylvia’s father brings a legal action against the school district arguing against segregation in what eventually becomes a successful landmark case. Their lives intersect after Sylvia finds Aki’s doll, meets her in Poston and sends her letters. Working with material from interviews, Conkling alternates between Aki and Sylvia’s stories, telling them in the third person from the war’s start in 1942 through its end in 1945, with an epilogue updating Sylvia’s story to 1955.Pub Date: July 12, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-58246-337-7
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Tricycle
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2011
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