Honoring her parents' promise, ten-year-old Princess Rania is taken from her lush palace and thrust into the arid desert home of Sandwriter, the powerful shaman whose magic is essential to survival in their world. When she's 14—wiser, stronger, but still ambivalent about dedicating her life to magic—Sandwriter sends her to choose her future, a choice made more difficult by the love of Atbin, the desert youth who took her to Sandwriter four years ago. Conscience wins: Rania decides that her responsibility to her people outweighs her personal happiness. The jacket shows Atbin and Rania perched far forward on a two-legged desert beast that, if the laws of gravity hold, is about to go snout-down in the sand; but this is fantasy, so the beast lumbers on. It's not a bad metaphor for the book: lots of suspension of disbelief required. That said, young readers will find some convincing details, while tales of selflessness still have their place. There may even be a subtext about the harsh price society exacts from women who choose wider responsibilities than love and family. (Fiction. 10+)
Pub Date: June 30, 1992
ISBN: 0-671-75033-X
Page Count: 196
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1992
Salva Dut is 11 years old when war raging in the Sudan separates him from his family. To avoid the conflict, he walks for years with other refugees, seeking sanctuary and scarce food and water. Park simply yet convincingly depicts the chaos of war and an unforgiving landscape as they expose Salva to cruelties both natural and man-made. The lessons Salva remembers from his family keep him from despair during harsh times in refugee camps and enable him, as a young man, to begin a new life in America. As Salva’s story unfolds, readers also learn about another Sudanese youth, Nya, and how these two stories connect contributes to the satisfying conclusion. This story is told as fiction, but it is based on real-life experiences of one of the “Lost Boys” of the Sudan. Salva and Nya’s compelling voices lift their narrative out of the “issue” of the Sudanese War, and only occasionally does the explanation of necessary context intrude in the storytelling. Salva’s heroism and the truth that water is a source of both conflict and reconciliation receive equal, crystal-clear emphasis in this heartfelt account. (Fiction. 10-14)
Pub Date: Nov. 15, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-547-25127-1
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Clarion Books
Review Posted Online: Sept. 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2010
SEEN & HEARD
A child finds that being alone in a tiny tropical paradise has its ups and downs in this appealingly offbeat tale from the Australian author of Peeling the Onion (1999). Though her mother is long dead and her scientist father Jack has just sailed off on a quick expedition to gather plankton, Nim is anything but lonely on her small island home. Not only does she have constant companions in Selkie, a sea lion, and a marine iguana named Fred, but Chica, a green turtle, has just arrived for an annual egg-laying—and, through the solar-powered laptop, she has even made a new e-mail friend in famed adventure novelist Alex Rover. Then a string of mishaps darkens Nim’s sunny skies: her father loses rudder and dish antenna in a storm; a tourist ship that was involved in her mother’s death appears off the island’s reefs; and, running down a volcanic slope, Nim takes a nasty spill that leaves her feverish, with an infected knee. Though she lives halfway around the world and is in reality a decidedly unadventurous urbanite, Alex, short for “Alexandra,” sets off to the rescue, arriving in the midst of another storm that requires Nim and companions to rescue her. Once Jack brings his battered boat limping home, the stage is set for sunny days again. Plenty of comic, freely-sketched line drawings help to keep the tone light, and Nim, with her unusual associates and just-right mix of self-reliance and vulnerability, makes a character young readers won’t soon tire of. (Fiction. 10-12)
Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-375-81123-0
Page Count: 144
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2000
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