Colorful characterizations and high-spirited language carry this ripsnorting western. After the death of her mother, Eliza, 12, runs away from her cruel and unscrupulous Kansas relatives. She sets out with her faithful dog, Caesar, to find her father in the silver mines of Colorado; early on, in a stolen pair of overalls, she transforms herself into "Eli." Soon after she meets Calvin Featherbone, known as the Gentleman Outlaw, who has been shot and left for dead by a pack of scoundrels. A healed Calvin—who talks "like he swallowed a dictionary"—sets off with Eli for Tinville, Colorado, to shoot his sworn enemy, Sheriff Alfred Yates. The sheriff happens to be Eliza's father. Hahn (Look For Me By Moonlight, 1995, etc.) has written an amusing comedy of errors that derives much of its humor from Calvin's speech and manners and Eliza's wry asides alluding to her true identity as a girl. With plenty of twists and turns—and a cameo appearance by Doc Holliday—it's a real cowgirl triumph. (Fiction. 10-14)
Pub Date: April 22, 1996
ISBN: 0-395-73083-X
Page Count: 212
Publisher: Clarion Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1996
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
The wish-fulfilling title and sun-washed, catalog-beautiful teens on the cover will be enticing for girls looking for a...
Han’s leisurely paced, somewhat somber narrative revisits several beach-house summers in flashback through the eyes of now 15-year-old Isabel, known to all as Belly.
Belly measures her growing self by these summers and by her lifelong relationship with the older boys, her brother and her mother’s best friend’s two sons. Belly’s dawning awareness of her sexuality and that of the boys is a strong theme, as is the sense of summer as a separate and reflective time and place: Readers get glimpses of kisses on the beach, her best friend’s flirtations during one summer’s visit, a first date. In the background the two mothers renew their friendship each year, and Lauren, Belly’s mother, provides support for her friend—if not, unfortunately, for the children—in Susannah’s losing battle with breast cancer. Besides the mostly off-stage issue of a parent’s severe illness there’s not much here to challenge most readers—driving, beer-drinking, divorce, a moment of surprise at the mothers smoking medicinal pot together.
The wish-fulfilling title and sun-washed, catalog-beautiful teens on the cover will be enticing for girls looking for a diversion. (Fiction. 12-14)Pub Date: May 5, 2009
ISBN: 978-1-4169-6823-8
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2009
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