Harrowing and realistic but slanted toward sensationalism.
Thirteen-year-old Gentry feels trapped in a polygamous walled community ruled by the words of a prophet incarcerated in Texas.
Gentry and her older brother Tanner are excited to receive an invitation to play their violins at a local music festival, but when the Prophet calls to forbid women from leaving the compound, Gentry’s hopes are dashed. Tanner decides to sneak Gentry out to perform, but defying the Prophet carries consequences. Restrictions, harsh physical punishment, and ejection from the community are meted out at the whims of the leadership. Tanner and Gentry’s disobedience forces her family to make desperate decisions. Lifted straight from the headlines, Gentry’s tale is a harrowing reality for splinter groups of the LDS Church. Unfortunately, while the details are horrific, there is no attempt to qualify the judgment leveled against all Mormons. The story is compelling, but the use of stereotypes undercuts its power. The sadistic Prophet’s son, the pedophilic leader, and complicit women are predictable place holders for real characters. Gentry’s naiveté about the reality of the outside world is understandable, but she seems equally clueless about her own, all-white community. Violence against animals and children as well as sadistic treatment of a girl with Down syndrome might further make this a difficult read for younger children despite the publisher’s designation of a middle-grade audience for it.
Harrowing and realistic but slanted toward sensationalism. (Fiction. 12-14)Pub Date: Nov. 6, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-4998-0755-4
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Little Bee Books
Review Posted Online: Sept. 1, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2018
Chilling, difficult, and definitely not for readers without a solid understanding of the Holocaust despite the relatively...
A young boy grows up in Adolf Hitler’s mountain home in Austria.
Seven-year-old Pierrot Fischer and his frail French mother live in Paris. His German father, a bitter ex-soldier, returned to Germany and died there. Pierrot’s best friend is Anshel Bronstein, a deaf Jewish boy. After his mother dies, he lives in an orphanage, until his aunt Beatrix sends for him to join her at the Berghof mountain retreat in Austria, where she is housekeeper for Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun. It is here that he becomes ever more enthralled with Hitler and grows up, proudly wearing the uniform of the Hitler Youth, treating others with great disdain, basking in his self-importance, and then committing a terrible act of betrayal against his aunt. He witnesses vicious acts against Jews, and he hears firsthand of plans for extermination camps. Yet at war’s end he maintains that he was only a child and didn’t really understand. An epilogue has him returning to Paris, where he finds Anshel and begins a kind of catharsis. Boyne includes real Nazi leaders and historical details in his relentless depiction of Pierrot’s inevitable corruption and self-delusion. As with The Boy in the Striped Pajamas (2006), readers both need to know what Pierrot disingenuously doesn’t and are expected to accept his extreme naiveté, his total lack of awareness and comprehension in spite of what is right in front of him.
Chilling, difficult, and definitely not for readers without a solid understanding of the Holocaust despite the relatively simple reading level. (Historical fiction. 12-14)Pub Date: June 7, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-62779-030-7
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: March 29, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Carrick (Melanie, 1996, etc.) sensitively explores the pain of a parent’s death through the eyes, feelings, and voice of a nine-year-old boy whose world turns upside down when his father becomes terminally ill with cancer. Through a fictional reminiscence, the story explores many of the issues common to children whose parents are ill—loss of control, changes in physical appearance and mental ability, upsets in daily routine, experiences of guilt and anger, the reaction of friends, and, most of all, a fear of the unknown. Although the book suffers from a pat ending and the black-and-white sketches emphasize the bleakness of the topic, this title is a notch above pure bibliotherapy and will fill a special niche for children struggling to deal with the trauma of parental sickness and death. (Fiction. 7-10)
Pub Date: Sept. 20, 1999
ISBN: 0-395-84151-8
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Clarion Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1999
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