Eli (12) feels old enough to stay home alone in L.A. when his rock-star father goes on the road—but he's sent to his aunt and uncle, Maud and Danny, in a small town in the Willamette Valley. Flashy-as-they-come Eli soon sheds his snakeskin boots and diamond earring—though not his long hair or his songwriting (lyrics head each chapter and form an appendix); in gardening, chopping wood, and the quiet forest all around he finds something that he needs. Soon, Eli learns that his favorite stand of fir is to be logged off; in protest, he climbs a tree in the loggers' path and refuses to leave until a judge orders a hearing. The author leans hard on Oregonians for their narrow-mindedness, yet Danny is easygoing, and he and Maud—who is permanently disabled by an auto accident—are wise and personable. Eli, too, is intelligent and adaptable; after he learns that his stay is likely to be extended, he cuts his hair and makes a successful effort to fit in at the local school. A simply told first novel featuring an effective act of nonviolence. (Fiction. 11-14)
Pub Date: Oct. 30, 1991
ISBN: 0-689-50527-2
Page Count: 144
Publisher: McElderry
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1991
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
After witnessing the rising tide of anti-Semitism in Nazi Germany, Daniel is suddenly transported, at age 14, from his comfortable life in Frankfurt to a Polish ghetto, then to Auschwitz and Buchenwald—losing most of his family along the way, seeing Nazi brutality of both the casual and the calculated kind, and recording atrocities with a smuggled camera (``What has happened to me?...Who am I? Where am I going?''). Matas, explicating an exhibit of photos and other materials at the new United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, creates a convincing composite youth and experience—fictional but carefully based on survivors' accounts. It's a savage story with no attempt to soften the culpability of the German people; Daniel's profound anger is easier to understand than is his father's compassion or his sister's plea to ``chose love. Always choose love.'' Daniel survives to be reunited, after the war, with his wife-to-be, but his dying friend's last word echoes beyond the happy ending: ``Remember...'' An unusual undertaking, effectively carried out. Chronology; glossary. (Fiction. 11-14)
Pub Date: April 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-590-46920-7
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1993
Its focus firmly on the details of mountaineering in the French Alps and the Himalayas—mechanics, technique, lore, social milieu—a simplistic novel about an unlikely superheroine (though already making record-breaking climbs while still in her teens, her only major injury occurs early on when a guide hazes her by giving her a double load) who achieves worldwide recognition for her exploits in the 1950's. The tacked-on plot—minor setbacks, a romance with another climber—has less depth than most comic strips and reads like an old-fashioned adulatory biography. Roper is obviously well-acquainted with climbing, and for anyone interested in the subject there's a wealth of information here; he should have omitted the feeble story and added an index. (Fiction. 11-14)
Pub Date: May 1, 1991
ISBN: 0-316-75606-7
Page Count: 188
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 1991
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