Pura Belpré honoree Delacre’s chronicles—each different from the next—offer moving snapshots of family heartbreak,...
Based on actual accounts, this dynamic short story collection focuses on and delves into the nuances of the lives of young Latinos and Latinas in the United States.
In the opening story, “The Attack,” readers are exposed to a medical emergency gone wrong when police racially profile a young Mexican-American man undergoing an epileptic seizure with a knife in hand. The story lands like a gut punch, and the following 11 also leave impressions and invite considerable scrutiny. Another touching narrative, titled “Burrito Man,” depicts the sudden death of a Salvadoran father saving for his daughter’s college tuition as an unassuming food vendor in D.C. Inspired by true stories and woven with cultural details and Spanish dialects appropriate to different Latin American countries, the collection is penetrating: Latin American families are divided by deportation; illness and poverty are constant struggles; characters feel guilt, shame, and an inescapable sense of being unwelcome in the U.S. Tech-industry gentrifiers and neighborhood kids clash over a San Francisco soccer field; a privileged, fifth-generation middle-class Tejano harbors palpable prejudices and misconceptions about unaccompanied children crossing the border. Common Spanish sayings—refranes—and attractive freehand pencil sketches of the protagonists usher in each story, both serving as integral elements in this solidly packaged collection.
Pura Belpré honoree Delacre’s chronicles—each different from the next—offer moving snapshots of family heartbreak, disadvantage, dysfunctionality, heartbreak, privilege, and joy. (glossary, translations, notes) (Short stories. 8-12)Pub Date: Aug. 29, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-06-239214-5
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2017
The three way chats, in which they are joined by other animals, about web spinning, themselves, other humans—are as often...
A successful juvenile by the beloved New Yorker writer portrays a farm episode with an imaginative twist that makes a poignant, humorous story of a pig, a spider and a little girl.
Young Fern Arable pleads for the life of runt piglet Wilbur and gets her father to sell him to a neighbor, Mr. Zuckerman. Daily, Fern visits the Zuckermans to sit and muse with Wilbur and with the clever pen spider Charlotte, who befriends him when he is lonely and downcast. At the news of Wilbur's forthcoming slaughter, campaigning Charlotte, to the astonishment of people for miles around, spins words in her web. "Some Pig" comes first. Then "Terrific"—then "Radiant". The last word, when Wilbur is about to win a show prize and Charlotte is about to die from building her egg sac, is "Humble". And as the wonderful Charlotte does die, the sadness is tempered by the promise of more spiders next spring.
The three way chats, in which they are joined by other animals, about web spinning, themselves, other humans—are as often informative as amusing, and the whole tenor of appealing wit and pathos will make fine entertainment for reading aloud, too.Pub Date: Oct. 15, 1952
ISBN: 978-0-06-026385-0
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1952
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
Funny and endearing, though incomplete characterizations provoke questions.
An isolated class of misfits and a teacher on the edge of retirement are paired together for a year of (supposed) failure.
Zachary Kermit, a 55-year-old teacher, has been haunted for the last 27 years by a student cheating scandal that has earned him the derision of his colleagues and killed his teaching spirit. So when he is assigned to teach the Self-Contained Special Eighth-Grade Class—a dumping ground for “the Unteachables,” students with “behavior issues, learning problems, juvenile delinquents”—he is unfazed, as he is only a year away from early retirement. His relationship with his seven students—diverse in temperament, circumstance, and ability—will be one of “uncomfortable roommates” until June. But when Mr. Kermit unexpectedly stands up for a student, the kids of SCS-8 notice his sense of “justice and fairness.” Mr. Kermit finds he may even care a little about them, and they start to care back in their own way, turning a corner and bringing along a few ghosts from Mr. Kermit’s past. Writing in the alternating voices of Mr. Kermit, most of his students, and two administrators, Korman spins a narrative of redemption and belief in exceeding self-expectations. Naming conventions indicate characters of different ethnic backgrounds, but the book subscribes to a white default. The two students who do not narrate may be students of color, and their characterizations subtly—though arguably inadequately—demonstrate the danger of preconceptions.
Funny and endearing, though incomplete characterizations provoke questions. (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Jan. 8, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-06-256388-0
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Balzer + Bray/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Sept. 16, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2018
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