“So here’s the thing about being Baker Acted,” opens narrator Kenna, referring to a real-life Florida law called the Baker...
Told in finely tuned free verse, this story about self-injury portrays an unusual root cause for cutting: peer pressure.
“So here’s the thing about being Baker Acted,” opens narrator Kenna, referring to a real-life Florida law called the Baker Act, which allows for involuntary psychiatric institutionalization for up to 72 hours. Kenna’s sent straight there when a friend catches her cutting herself in the school bathroom. Kenna’s steamed, because the girl who told on her is a cutter too, as is their whole social circle. Girls compare scars and slits, sharing tips for hiding pins and stealing blades. In what Kenna calls the Sisters of the Broken Glass, girls crowd around at lunch, “looking at my cuts, rubbing my shoulders, / dabbing me with I-feel-so-bad-for-you ointment.” Kenna has no single, specific inner trauma, only various (valid) unhappinesses; she feels like “just a copycutter. / A follower who did it to fit in. / And now I can’t stop.” Now she finds her scars “[p]retty as pink pearls” and craves the adrenaline: Cutting’s “like energy / moving through my body / in waves. // Rushing. / Cleansing.” Despite hipster references (John Green, Tony Hawk, Tumblr, Twitter), the simple characterizations could have made for a generic problem novel, but Kuderick’s keen diction and free-verse technique shine.Pub Date: Sept. 9, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-06-230656-2
Page Count: 224
Publisher: HarperTeen
Review Posted Online: July 15, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2014
Readers who relish self-indulgent inner monologue and expect dramatic arguments, seething resentment, tearful heartbreak,...
A “good girl” experiences an unplanned pregnancy and its aftermath.
Evelyn is a classic good girl, earning top grades and excelling in the art studio as well as on the track. When her parents start paying more attention to their acrimoniously crumbling marriage than to their daughter, she punishes them by becoming drinking, drugging, sex-having Bad Evelyn. Unfortunately, Bad Evelyn’s exploits become a punishment for her, too, as her protection-free sex with Todd leads to an unplanned pregnancy. Evelyn’s situation is the stuff of classic YA problem novels: What will she do about her pregnancy? How will she live with her choices? Will her heart, in fact, go on? Fearing expulsion from her competitive and deeply conservative Catholic high school, Evelyn relocates to Chicago to live with her aunts Linda and Nora and their daughters while she makes her choices and protects her GPA. Evelyn is a tough nut to crack, and she’s not particularly likable, but through all her self-contradictory crabbiness and emotionally withholding fears, readers may see someone recognizably real. First-time author Carter drags her narrative out, making readers angst along with Evelyn as she chronicles every week of her pregnancy and beyond.
Pub Date: Feb. 26, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-59990-958-5
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: Dec. 25, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
This plotless, grandiloquent slice of life will appeal to readers working their way up to Ayn Rand and Tom Robbins.
A stylized, meandering sequel to King Dork (2006).
Tom Henderson’s new adventure begins where King Dork ended: in 1999, after a brutal tuba attack preceding the Christmas vacation of Tom’s sophomore year. Despite his brief sexual successes before this volume’s opening, he’s still alone but for his only friend, Sam. Their dork solidarity against the “normal” tormenting thugs of Hillmont High is doomed, however. The fall semester’s scandals have led to Hillmont’s closure, and the two boys are off to separate high schools. Now Sam’s listening to getting-the-girl motivational tapes, giving Tom advice steeped in toxic misogyny. Tom’s disturbed by Clearview High’s seemingly sincere school spirit; it reminds him of the perky normalcy of Happy Days or Grease. Tom gets his first girlfriend and discovers that getting along with others is not all it’s cracked up to be. He’s a CD-hating, vinyl-worshipping proto-hipster who, along with Sam, refers to his favorite albums by catalog number—“I actually might like EKS 74071 better than EKS 74051”—guaranteeing that neither their classmates nor the novel’s readers will be able to participate in the conversation. Meticulously described historical elements—Tom’s sister’s obsession with the family landline, the boys’ hatred of modern CD music formats, Sam’s dorky, holstered, clunky cellphone—are conspicuous in this otherwise modern-seeming story.
This plotless, grandiloquent slice of life will appeal to readers working their way up to Ayn Rand and Tom Robbins. (Historical fiction. 14-16)Pub Date: Sept. 9, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-385-73618-3
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: July 28, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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