While addressing themes of identity, family history, racism, and coming of age, Talbert (Heart of a Jaguar, 1995, etc.) doesn’t focus enough on any one issue to give his book power. Attending school and Sunday mass, watching baseball games in the park, and hosing the clay off his father when he comes home from the brick factory are the routines that fill teenaged Lu°s’s life in East Los Angeles. Life changes dramatically, however, when his father joins the fighting ranks of WWII, and Lu°s’s mother receives news that her estranged father is dying. Coping with his father’s absence, Lu°s must also adjust to a new way of life when he moves to his mother’s childhood home in small Las Manos, New Mexico. It is hard for Lu°s to adapt to the simple farm life, but with the help of two uncles, he learns to love its charms. He also uncovers the truth about his family and their hidden Jewish heritage. While Lu°s grapples with a shifting sense of self, he and his mother return to Los Angeles where even more changes wait. Talbert skillfully draws contrasts between the city—with its sometimes simmering melting pot—and the more contained Las Manos; his knack for atmosphere, imagery, and characterization save the novel from its hastily developed themes and hurried, surface relationships. (glossary) (Fiction. 12-14)
Pub Date: March 22, 1999
ISBN: 0-395-91423-X
Page Count: 186
Publisher: Clarion Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1999
Themes of freedom and responsibility twine between the lines of this short but heavy novel from the author of Because of Winn-Dixie (2000). Three months after his mother's death, Rob and his father are living in a small-town Florida motel, each nursing sharp, private pain. On the same day Rob has two astonishing encounters: first, he stumbles upon a caged tiger in the woods behind the motel; then he meets Sistine, a new classmate responding to her parents' breakup with ready fists and a big chip on her shoulder. About to burst with his secret, Rob confides in Sistine, who instantly declares that the tiger must be freed. As Rob quickly develops a yen for Sistine's company that gives her plenty of emotional leverage, and the keys to the cage almost literally drop into his hands, credible plotting plainly takes a back seat to character delineation here. And both struggle for visibility beneath a wagonload of symbol and metaphor: the real tiger (and the inevitable recitation of Blake's poem); the cage; Rob's dream of Sistine riding away on the beast's back; a mysterious skin condition on Rob's legs that develops after his mother's death; a series of wooden figurines that he whittles; a larger-than-life African-American housekeeper at the motel who dispenses wisdom with nearly every utterance; and the climax itself, which is signaled from the start. It's all so freighted with layers of significance that, like Lois Lowry's Gathering Blue (2000), Anne Mazer's Oxboy (1995), or, further back, Julia Cunningham's Dorp Dead (1965), it becomes more an exercise in analysis than a living, breathing story. Still, the tiger, "burning bright" with magnificent, feral presence, does make an arresting central image. (Fiction. 10-12)
Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-7636-0911-0
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2001
BOOK TO SCREEN
Fans of Cameron’s Huey and Julian stories (More Stories Huey Tells, 1997, etc.) are in for a treat as Gloria, their friend from those tales, gets a book of her own and graciously allows the two brothers to share it . In the first tale, Gloria makes a wonderful card for her mother, but the wind blows it away and it ends up in the cage of a cantankerous parrot. Thanks to Mr. Bates, Huey and Julian’s dad, the day is saved, as is the burgeoning friendship that Gloria and the boys have struck up with new neighbor Latisha in the story, “The Promise.” In another story, Gloria has to deal with a huge problem—fractions—and this time it’s her dad who helps her through it. Mr. Bates proves helpful again when the group trains an “obsessed” puppy, while Gloria’s mother is supportive when Gloria is unintentionally hurt by her three best friends. The stories are warm and funny, as Gloria, a spunky kid who gets into some strange predicaments, finds out that her friends and wise, loving adults are good to have around when trouble beckons. Great fun, with subtly placed, positive messages that never take center stage. (b&w illustrations) (Fiction. 8-12)
Pub Date: March 9, 2000
ISBN: 0-374-32670-3
Page Count: 93
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2000
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