Overall, a winning and sometimes-harrowing story of a dog and his many families.
A loyal, playful, and opinionated dachshund adjusts to a new home after losing his human in an incident he cannot remember.
The story is told from the point of view of the dog, named Strudel by the Philadelphia shelter that initially takes him in. At the shelter, Strudel meets a fifth-grader named Jake, who reads him adventure stories from a book called Chief, Dog of the Old West and ultimately adopts him. Jake's house is full of chaos—there’s tension between Jake and the older sister he's nicknamed "Mutanski," forgotten meals and walks, and Jake's mom's demanding, easily provoked boyfriend, Arnie—and both Strudel and the humans adapt slowly but discernibly. Meanwhile, Jake does dangerous "favors" for a neighborhood bully, and a gang of cats menaces Strudel when he's left outside during the day. The multiple plotlines keep the story moving quickly, and each—including the mystery of Strudel's separation from his original owner—is satisfyingly resolved. Strudel's perspective vacillates between true to dog nature (exchanging pee "messages" with other neighborhood dogs) and not at all: he mistakes a garden hose for a rattlesnake in part because it is green (real dogs don't perceive color that way) and, more distressingly, dislikes chocolate but suffers no apparent consequences from eating it, despite its notorious toxicity to dogs.
Overall, a winning and sometimes-harrowing story of a dog and his many families. (Fiction. 9-12)Pub Date: April 1, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8234-3534-0
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Holiday House
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A richly detailed account of a little-known event in World War II.
An escape from war-torn Britain becomes a struggle for survival when a ship is torpedoed off the coast of England.
In June 1940, Great Britain formed the Children’s Overseas Reception Board to transfer Britain’s children away from the encroaching war to safe harbors around the world. Over 200,000 children between the ages of 5 and 15 applied for just 20,000 spots. Thirteen-year-old Kenneth Sparks is chosen to travel on the City of Benares, a luxury ocean liner, to Canada, where he will live with his aunt in Edmonton. The children are distracted by rich food, new toys, and soft beds, but the accompanying convoy of war ships is a constant reminder that while the blitzkrieg might be behind them, German torpedoes are a very present threat. Three days into their voyage, the Benares is hit, sending crew and passengers into the lifeboats and the water. Ken, along with a handful of others, all white except 32 Asian sailors of varied ethnicity (called Lascars at the time), must survive with little water, food, or shelter if they are to make it out alive. Told in verse, the story of Lifeboat 12 is lyrical, terrifying, and even at times funny. Hood makes effective use of line breaks and punctuation to wrap readers up in Ken’s tale. Copious research, including interviews with the real Ken Sparks, went into the making of this fictional recasting of a true story of survival. Backmatter offers further information, including the racism experienced by the Lascars.
A richly detailed account of a little-known event in World War II. (Historical verse fiction. 9-12)Pub Date: Sept. 4, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-4814-6883-1
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 27, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2018
A complex, hopeful, fresh retelling.
A fugitive from prison must evade his pursuer, the prison warden’s daughter, while potentially joining a revolution.
Pong has lived his whole life in Namwon Prison until a chance escape leaves him free in the city of Chattana. Pong quickly finds that freedom does not come so easily: Since the Great Fire, Chattana is under the strict control of the Governor, who creates the magical lights that run the city and that are the only lights allowed. Marked as a prisoner, Pong has nowhere to turn. Worse, the prison warden’s daughter Nok is on his trail, intent on proving both her worth and that of her family with his capture. Meanwhile, larger forces in Chattana are stirring, as not everyone is happy with the Governor’s rule. Set in a fantasy analogue of Thailand, all characters are presumed Thai, and Thai life and culture permeate the story in everything from the mangoes Pong eats in prison to the monks he meets beyond the prison’s walls. It’s also a retelling of Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables, and Soontornvat has maintained the themes of the original while making the plot and the characters utterly her own. Pong’s and Nok’s narratives are drawn together by common threads of family, loyalty, and a quest to define right and wrong, twining to create a single, satisfying tale.
A complex, hopeful, fresh retelling. (Fantasy. 9-12)Pub Date: March 24, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5362-0494-0
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: Jan. 11, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
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