When her mother is killed by a drunk driver, Gabriella, 11, finds herself alone, living with her late mother's best friend. Her father, writing a travel book in Asia, is incommunicado. Two items comfort her: an heirloom ring and an ancestral portrait of a uniformed boy wearing that ring. Gabriella wonders about her wealthy paternal grandmother, who is said to have disinherited her father for marrying a Mexican, Gabriella's mother. When a series of events lead to Gabriella's moving in with her grandmother and Aunt Isabel, the girl learns just how many lies her father told. After the grandmother dies, he returns and inherits everything, while Gabriella decides that her future is with the loving Aunt Isabel. Uncharacteristically for Sachs (Thirteen Going On Seven, 1993, etc.), the complex plot yields almost no suspense, and there are gaps in the storyline (e.g., Gabriella and her mother live in near-poverty while accepting that there is money for her father's lengthy research trips). Gabriella is given to bratty tantrums and the rest of the characters are relatively forgettable. For astute readers and the author's fans, the last straw will be that text and jacket art don't match. (Fiction. 10-14)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-525-45421-7
Page Count: 165
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1995
The format of this taut and moving drama forcefully regulates the pacing; breathless, edge-of-the-seat courtroom scenes...
In a riveting novel from Myers (At Her Majesty’s Request, 1999, etc.), a teenager who dreams of being a filmmaker writes the story of his trial for felony murder in the form of a movie script, with journal entries after each day’s action.
Steve is accused of being an accomplice in the robbery and murder of a drug store owner. As he goes through his trial, returning each night to a prison where most nights he can hear other inmates being beaten and raped, he reviews the events leading to this point in his life. Although Steve is eventually acquitted, Myers leaves it up to readers to decide for themselves on his protagonist’s guilt or innocence.
The format of this taut and moving drama forcefully regulates the pacing; breathless, edge-of-the-seat courtroom scenes written entirely in dialogue alternate with thoughtful, introspective journal entries that offer a sense of Steve’s terror and confusion, and that deftly demonstrate Myers’s point: the road from innocence to trouble is comprised of small, almost invisible steps, each involving an experience in which a “positive moral decision” was not made. (Fiction. 12-14)Pub Date: May 31, 1999
ISBN: 0-06-028077-8
Page Count: 280
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1999
PERSPECTIVES
Illegal immigrant sisters learn a lot about themselves when their family faces deportation in this compelling contemporary drama. Immigrants from Bangladesh, Nadira, her older sister Aisha and their parents live in New York City with expired visas. Fourteen-year-old Nadira describes herself as “the slow-wit second-born” who follows Aisha, the family star who’s on track for class valedictorian and a top-rate college. Everything changes when post-9/11 government crack-downs on Muslim immigrants push the family to seek asylum in Canada where they are turned away at the border and their father is arrested by U.S. immigration. The sisters return to New York living in constant fear of detection and trying to pretend everything is normal. As months pass, Aisha falls apart while Nadira uses her head in “a right way” to save her father and her family. Nadira’s need for acceptance by her family neatly parallels the family’s desire for acceptance in their adopted country. A perceptive peek into the lives of foreigners on the fringe. (endnote) (Fiction. 10-14)
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2006
ISBN: 1-4169-0351-8
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Ginee Seo/Atheneum
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2005
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