A quiet, beautifully moving portrayal of a multicultural family.
When her cousin unexpectedly moves from Japan to Virginia, a Japanese-American girl finds their cultural differences embarrassing until kite fighting unites them.
Skye’s Japanese father has not seen his family since marrying her American mother and moving to Virginia. Skye knows some Japanese, but she’s an American kid, obsessed with soccer. Her Japanese cousin Hiroshi speaks some English, but he’s thoroughly Japanese and loves making and flying kites with his beloved grandfather. Everything changes when Hiroshi and his family relocate near Skye’s family for Grandfather’s cancer treatment. Skye’s parents enroll her in Japanese classes, jeopardizing her dream to play on the All-Star soccer team. Hiroshi, meanwhile, has lost his chance to compete in his town’s annual rokkaku kite battle. As Skye struggles with Japanese and Hiroshi struggles with English, both feel angry and frustrated. Ashamed because Hiroshi’s different, Skye fails to help him acclimate to fifth grade, where he feels like an alien. Hiroshi resents sharing Grandfather with Skye, until Grandfather’s health fails, and the cousins find common ground. Skye and Hiroshi’s American and Japanese perspectives emerge gradually through alternating chapters, while their grandfather functions as a pivotal character whose wisdom and legacy binds them. Details of Japanese language, culture and kite fighting enhance the diversity theme.
A quiet, beautifully moving portrayal of a multicultural family. (Fiction. 9-12)Pub Date: July 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-58089-434-0
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Charlesbridge
Review Posted Online: May 15, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
McCaughrean maintains the dizzyingly high standards of The Golden Hoard (1996) and its sequels with this thematic collection of sky myths and legends. Associated with cultures as diverse as Ancient Rome and the Cook Islands, the 15 tales explain, among other things, rainbows, thunder, falling stars, the origin of night, and why the sun and moon live far apart. Whether love stories, tragedies, accounts of heroic deeds or trickster tales, all are likely to be new to young readers, even those as widely told as “Orion’s Downfall” and the Chinese “Bridge of Magpies.” McCaughrean retells them with characteristic vigor: “With sulfur from the hot springs, with magma from the volcanoes, [the gods] fashioned a foe to send against Orion: an insect that wore its skeleton on the outside for armor, a creature the color of rage and venom . . .” Williams’s indistinct, ordinary-looking figures seldom capture the tales’ drama, and while McCaughrean closes with comments on each story, there are no specific source notes. Still, this extends the scope of such Native American gatherings as Gretchen Mayo’s Star Tales (1987), and readers will be captivated by the range of visions here. (Folktales. 9-12)
Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-689-83015-7
Page Count: 112
Publisher: McElderry
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2000
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
In a time not so far from now but within the universe of the Dragon Chronicles, 14-year-old Bryn misses her scientist mom, who has disappeared in Alaska. Her dad has gone searching for her, leaving Bryn with her aunt and her little sister. But an odd sound coming from boxes of her mother’s materials in the basement leads Bryn to a leathery egg—and the hatching of a small, hungry lizard. With wings. The story turns to Tal, who was Bryn’s mother’s research assistant, and to Josh, who makes a living finding fossils—and maybe other things. Pollution is endemic in this world, and swarms of animals and insects appear and vanish. Some teens use tattoos and skin grafts to mimic the appearance of the myriad cancer victims. Told in the first person by Bryn and in the third for Tal and Josh, the tale knits Internet searches, social networking, teenage friendships and ecosphere studies together with an utterly engaging baby dragon. Bryn’s family’s ties to winged creatures and their passion for scientific learning are delineated with swift precision and nuanced emotion. (Fantasy. 9-12)
Pub Date: Sept. 21, 2010
ISBN: 970-1-4169-5786-7
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Atheneum
Review Posted Online: Jan. 8, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2010
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