In this intriguing, thought-provoking, and certainly original novel, Amelia Lenore Hazelwood is 100 years old and living in a nursing home where the only thing she has to look forward to is death. Everything changes though when 50 of the nursing-home residents are selected to participate in a top-secret “unaging” experiment, labeled Project Turnabout. Using a special chemical, the old people will become younger and younger until they take a drug that will stop the de-aging process—then they will forever be that age. But there’s been a problem, and the drug designed to stop the process doesn’t work. Now Amelia and the others face de-aging until infancy and then, presumably, death. The story, told by Amelia as the process begins in the year 2000 and also as a 16-year-old (now nicknamed “Melly”) in 2085, follows Melly and her best friend Anny Beth’s attempts to find someone to take care of them as they revert to childhood and babyhood. The two friends run away to Amelia’s childhood home which, surprisingly, still stands and is inhabited by Melly’s great-great-great granddaughter, A.J. Hazelwood. Ironically, A.J., a reporter, has been researching Amelia’s life. Melly decides that A.J. is the best candidate to be her surrogate mother and they form a highly unusual family. As in some of her other work, Haddix (Among the Hidden, 1998, etc.) examines the role of an outsider navigating her way through an unfamiliar culture. She gets in a few good digs at some of the less savory aspects of American popular culture that only get worse as her fictional 21st century progresses. “ ‘Why is it,’ Anny Beth asks as the two watch TV, ‘that with everything else that’s improved in the last eighty years, TV news still stinks?’ ” The book raises philosophical questions that young-adult readers will sink their teeth into about the desirability of living longer lives than we do today, of the role of old people in our society, and about the ethics of medical experimentation. A fascinating concept engrossingly told. (Fiction. 11-16)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-689-82187-5
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2000
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Dark, seductive, but over-the-top: Characters and book alike will enthrall those who choose to play.
Garber returns to the world of bestseller Caraval (2017), this time with the focus on younger, more daring sister Donatella.
Valenda, capital of the empire, is host to the second of Legend’s magical games in a single year, and while Scarlett doesn’t want to play again, blonde Tella is eager for a chance to prove herself. She is haunted by the memory of her death in the last game and by the cursed Deck of Destiny she used as a child which foretold her loveless future. Garber has changed many of the rules of her expanding world, which now appears to be infused with magic and evil Fates. Despite a weak plot and ultraviolet prose (“He tasted like exquisite nightmares and stolen dreams, like the wings of fallen angels, and bottles of fresh moonlight.”), this is a tour de force of imagination. Themes of love, betrayal, and the price of magic (and desire) swirl like Caraval’s enchantments, and Dante’s sensuous kisses will thrill readers as much as they do Tella. The convoluted machinations of the Prince of Hearts (one of the Fates), Legend, and even the empress serve as the impetus for Tella’s story and set up future volumes which promise to go bigger. With descriptions focusing primarily on clothing, characters’ ethnicities are often indeterminate.
Dark, seductive, but over-the-top: Characters and book alike will enthrall those who choose to play. (glossary) (Fantasy. 12-16)Pub Date: May 29, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-250-09531-2
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: March 19, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Despite the stale fat-to-curvy pattern, compelling world building with a Southern European, pseudo-Christian feel,...
Adventure drags our heroine all over the map of fantasyland while giving her the opportunity to use her smarts.
Elisa—Princess Lucero-Elisa de Riqueza of Orovalle—has been chosen for Service since the day she was born, when a beam of holy light put a Godstone in her navel. She's a devout reader of holy books and is well-versed in the military strategy text Belleza Guerra, but she has been kept in ignorance of world affairs. With no warning, this fat, self-loathing princess is married off to a distant king and is embroiled in political and spiritual intrigue. War is coming, and perhaps only Elisa's Godstone—and knowledge from the Belleza Guerra—can save them. Elisa uses her untried strategic knowledge to always-good effect. With a character so smart that she doesn't have much to learn, body size is stereotypically substituted for character development. Elisa’s "mountainous" body shrivels away when she spends a month on forced march eating rat, and thus she is a better person. Still, it's wonderfully refreshing to see a heroine using her brain to win a war rather than strapping on a sword and charging into battle.
Despite the stale fat-to-curvy pattern, compelling world building with a Southern European, pseudo-Christian feel, reminiscent of Naomi Kritzer's Fires of the Faithful (2002), keeps this entry fresh. (Fantasy. 12-14)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-06-202648-4
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Greenwillow Books
Review Posted Online: July 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2011
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