Compelling and important.
A firsthand account of living through the AIDS pandemic as a young, gay man in the U.S.
Prolific author for young readers Curlee introduces teens to this topic by starting with Covid-19 as an empathic entryway to the past. He describes being a teenager in 1960s North Carolina, setting the scene in terms of technology and daily life and painting a picture of a time when sex was a secret kept by adults and homosexuality was only mentioned in joking or insulting ways. He goes on to chronicle how movements seeking equality across gender, sexuality, and race were interconnected and how the Stonewall uprising set the stage for a dazzling period of freedom and falling in love during the 1970s disco era in New York City. That fun-filled time came crashing down as many of Curlee’s vibrant friends began to die sudden, mysterious deaths. As the book progresses, educational, historical, and scientific content in text boxes increasingly supplements the narrative, although its placement and layout are sometimes distracting. It can also become difficult to track all the different individuals who are introduced. However, Curlee’s memoir, illustrated with personal photographs, is intimate and resonant as it presents the thrill of coming out and living openly and the fear and pain that followed when so many people he loved were taken from him too soon.
Compelling and important. (important people, the origins of AIDS, author’s note, musical references, source notes, select bibliography, image credits, index) (Nonfiction. 12-18)Pub Date: June 6, 2023
ISBN: 9781623543501
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Charlesbridge Teen
Review Posted Online: March 13, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2023
With the demand for all things Hamilton still strong, this will resonate with many teen readers.
Over 200 years after his death in a duel with former Vice President Aaron Burr, founding father Alexander Hamilton’s story is a major player in popular culture.
Brockenbrough begins her narrative with a list of the contradictions of Hamilton’s life and then sets out to describe many of them in detail. Hamilton’s wretched childhood and struggles for survival and an education set a tone that depicts him as the consummate self-made man whose flaws damaged both his political career and personal life. Hamilton’s courtship and marriage to Elizabeth Schuyler, a daughter of one of the country’s most influential families, is a key part, along with prominent figures from American history. Sometimes the intricacies of Revolutionary War strategy and Constitutional Convention maneuvering slow things down, making the pace uneven. However, tidbits about Hamilton’s role in the episode with Benedict Arnold and his close relationships with fellow soldier John Laurens and his sister-in-law Angelica Church are intriguing. The story is targeted to an older audience than Teri Kanefield’s Alexander Hamilton: The Making of America (2017), so the sex scandal that derailed Hamilton’s political career is part of the story, as is, of course, the duel that ended his life. After the epilogue, the volume includes information on 18th-century medicine, attire, and warfare among other contextualizing topics ; the volume will be illustrated with archival material (not seen).
With the demand for all things Hamilton still strong, this will resonate with many teen readers. (timeline, source notes, bibliography, index) (Biography. 12-18)Pub Date: Sept. 5, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-250-12319-0
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Feiwel & Friends
Review Posted Online: Aug. 6, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2017
Unapologetic and unflinching: a critical read.
Through honest and powerful vignettes, Jewell’s latest stitches together a collective memoir of formative experiences of educational racism and American schooling by people of the global majority.
Anchored by the author’s narrative of navigating school as a “light-skinned Black biracial cis-female” in a working-class neighborhood of a city in New York state, the work incorporates both her experiences of being labeled and othered in school as well as the first-person experiences of people of various ages, ethnicities, races, and genders, who write about how they navigated and were affected by systemic racism in their K-12, college, and postgraduate educations. The contributors include well-known authors of young people’s literature including Joanna Ho, Minh Lê, and Randy Ribay; writers and educators such as Lorena and Roberto Germán, Torrey Maldonado, and Gayatri Sethi; and two entries by teens from Portland, Oregon. Alongside stories of segregation, mistreatment by white educators, hypervisibility, surveillance, stereotyping, pigeonholing, and exclusion, this collection asks readers to “envision what freedom in schools might be.” These bold tales of truth telling are interspersed with historical facts, definitions, and anti-racist pedagogy that emphasize and contextualize the reality that, while experiences of racism in educational systems evolve with each generation, one constant is that schools are microcosms of larger systems of inequality and institutional oppression in the world beyond classroom walls.
Unapologetic and unflinching: a critical read. (resources, recommended reading, references, about the contributors) (Nonfiction. 12-18)Pub Date: Feb. 27, 2024
ISBN: 9780358638315
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Versify/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2023
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