Beautiful verse but insufficient depth.
Multiaward-winning author Engle presents the childhood and youth of famed Nicaraguan poet Rubén Darío.
Engle tirelessly brings forth yet another influential Latin American whose life is little known to children in the United States. Based on Darío’s autobiography, the free-verse novel is told in the voice of the poet as imagined by Engle. Readers learn of the mother who abandoned him at a young age under a palm tree; of the great-uncle who gave him a home; and of learning “the essential skill of storytelling” from this same great-uncle, “who tells tall tales / in a booming, larger-than-life / story voice.” Darío started writing poetry as a child and was soon known as “el niño poeta” (the poet boy). Impulsive and smart, Darío’s youth was both marked by events out of his control and controlled by his emotions. At the age of 19 he left Nicaragua for Chile, and—aside from one last poem briefly summarizing the rest of his life—it is here the novel ends. Unfortunately, the book focuses more on the emotional life that carried him forward than on the events surrounding him, leaving readers with the need to go elsewhere for a more complete picture.
Beautiful verse but insufficient depth. (author’s note, references) (Historical verse fiction. 12-15)Pub Date: Feb. 18, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5344-2493-7
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Atheneum
Review Posted Online: Oct. 27, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2019
In an unnamed country (a thinly veiled Philippines), three teenage boys pick trash for a meager living. A bag of cash in the trash might be—well, not their ticket out of poverty but at least a minor windfall. With 1,100 pesos, maybe they can eat chicken occasionally, instead of just rice. Gardo and Raphael are determined not to give any of it to the police who've been sniffing around, so they enlist their friend Rat. In alternating and tightly paced points of view, supplemented by occasional other voices, the boys relate the intrigue in which they're quickly enmeshed. A murdered houseboy, an orphaned girl, a treasure map, a secret code, corrupt politicians and 10,000,000 missing dollars: It all adds up to a cracker of a thriller. Sadly, the setting relies on Third World poverty tourism for its flavor, as if this otherwise enjoyable caper were being told by Olivia, the story's British charity worker who muses with vacuous sentimentality on the children that "break your heart" and "change your life." Nevertheless, a zippy and classic briefcase-full-of-money thrill ride. (Thriller. 12-14)
Pub Date: Oct. 12, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-385-75214-5
Page Count: 240
Publisher: David Fickling/Random
Review Posted Online: Aug. 31, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2010
Sanderson (Legion, 2018, etc.) plainly had a ball with this nonstop, highflying opener, and readers will too.
Eager to prove herself, the daughter of a flier disgraced for cowardice hurls herself into fighter pilot training to join a losing war against aliens.
Plainly modeled as a cross between Katniss Everdeen and Conan the Barbarian (“I bathed in fires of destruction and reveled in the screams of the defeated. I didn’t get afraid”), Spensa “Spin” Nightshade leaves her previous occupation—spearing rats in the caverns of the colony planet Detritus for her widowed mother’s food stand—to wangle a coveted spot in the Defiant Defense Force’s flight school. Opportunities to exercise wild recklessness and growing skill begin at once, as the class is soon in the air, battling the mysterious Krell raiders who have driven people underground. Spensa, who is assumed white, interacts with reasonably diverse human classmates with varying ethnic markers. M-Bot, a damaged AI of unknown origin, develops into a comical sidekick: “Hello!...You have nearly died, and so I will say something to distract you from the serious, mind-numbing implications of your own mortality! I hate your shoes.” Meanwhile, hints that all is not as it seems, either with the official story about her father or the whole Krell war in general, lead to startling revelations and stakes-raising implications by the end. Stay tuned. Maps and illustrations not seen.
Sanderson (Legion, 2018, etc.) plainly had a ball with this nonstop, highflying opener, and readers will too. (Science fiction. 12-15)Pub Date: Nov. 6, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-399-55577-0
Page Count: 528
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2018
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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