A predictable but solid coming-of-age story.
With her grandmother’s health rapidly failing, high school senior Very (short for Veronica) feels responsible for holding together the rest of her family.
In a family full of artists, mathematically inclined Very is the practical one, if bossy. And she’s got a lot going on. Her grandmother, a well-known poet, talks to Very about her impending death, while Ramona, Very’s younger sister, shies away from even visiting Nonnie. Their mother, a painter on sabbatical from the local college, spends her days in a drunken fog on the couch, and their father stays absorbed in his academic life as a music professor. A mysterious artist is creating an homage to Nonnie out of bottle caps and glass on the side of the garage. Very tries to shepherd Ramona through the rough first days of freshman year, but Ramona avoids her. When Very catches the eye of Dominic, a green-eyed boy with a reputation for dealing drugs, her sweet, college-bound, Korean-American boyfriend, Christian, suddenly seems rather dull. Blakemore keeps these balls in the air through Very’s precise, analytical, present-tense narration. The intervention of the assistant principal, who brings Very to her office to discuss Ramona’s absences and makes the suggestion that Ramona might benefit from seeing the school psychologist, comes across as unlikely, though it does move the plot along.
A predictable but solid coming-of-age story. (Fiction. 12-16)Pub Date: Sept. 29, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-06-234839-5
Page Count: 384
Publisher: HarperTeen
Review Posted Online: June 5, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Though it lacks references or suggestions for further reading, Arn's agonizing story is compelling enough that many readers...
A harrowing tale of survival in the Killing Fields.
The childhood of Arn Chorn-Pond has been captured for young readers before, in Michelle Lord and Shino Arihara's picture book, A Song for Cambodia (2008). McCormick, known for issue-oriented realism, offers a fictionalized retelling of Chorn-Pond's youth for older readers. McCormick's version begins when the Khmer Rouge marches into 11-year-old Arn's Cambodian neighborhood and forces everyone into the country. Arn doesn't understand what the Khmer Rouge stands for; he only knows that over the next several years he and the other children shrink away on a handful of rice a day, while the corpses of adults pile ever higher in the mango grove. Arn does what he must to survive—and, wherever possible, to protect a small pocket of children and adults around him. Arn's chilling history pulls no punches, trusting its readers to cope with the reality of children forced to participate in murder, torture, sexual exploitation and genocide. This gut-wrenching tale is marred only by the author's choice to use broken English for both dialogue and description. Chorn-Pond, in real life, has spoken eloquently (and fluently) on the influence he's gained by learning English; this prose diminishes both his struggle and his story.
Though it lacks references or suggestions for further reading, Arn's agonizing story is compelling enough that many readers will seek out the history themselves. (preface, author's note) (Historical fiction. 12-15)Pub Date: May 8, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-06-173093-1
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Balzer + Bray/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 20, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2012
A smart, timely outing.
Two teens connect through a mysterious podcast in this sophomore effort by British author Oseman (Solitaire, 2015).
Frances Janvier is a 17-year-old British-Ethiopian head girl who is so driven to get into Cambridge that she mostly forgoes friendships for schoolwork. Her only self-indulgence is listening to and creating fan art for the podcast Universe City, “a…show about a suit-wearing student detective looking for a way to escape a sci-fi, monster-infested university.” Aled Last is a quiet white boy who identifies as “partly asexual.” When Frances discovers that Aled is the secret creator of Universe City, the two embark on a passionate, platonic relationship based on their joint love of pop culture. Their bond is complicated by Aled’s controlling mother and by Frances’ previous crush on Aled’s twin sister, Carys, who ran away last year and disappeared. When Aled’s identity is accidently leaked to the Universe City fandom, he severs his relationship with Frances, leaving her questioning her Cambridge goals and determined to win back his affection, no matter what the cost. Frances’ narration is keenly intelligent; she takes mordant pleasure in using an Indian friend’s ID to get into a club despite the fact they look nothing alike: “Gotta love white people.” Though the social-media–suffused plot occasionally lags, the main characters’ realistic relationship accurately depicts current issues of gender, race, and class.
A smart, timely outing. (Fiction. 12-16)Pub Date: March 28, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-06-233571-5
Page Count: 496
Publisher: HarperTeen
Review Posted Online: Jan. 16, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2017
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