Bisexual teen protagonists are rare enough to give some value to a middling entry like this one, but it’s best for...
A closeted aspiring figure skater struggles with friends, family, and relationships.
Keira’s Calgary high school isn’t a bastion of tolerance, but there’s a small clique of gay kids she could theoretically join if she revealed her sexuality. Sadly, she knows they’d never accept a “by-sex-you-all.” If she dates a boy, she’ll never get a chance with a girl; if she reveals her feelings for boys, the gay kids will think she’s a coward trying to seem “normal.” Plagued by crushes on boys and girls alike, Keira struggles with her best friend’s casual homophobia. After a secret relationship, revelations, and traumas, Keira encounters a resolution so cruel that it hearkens back to the era when queer teens in books for teens were always punished by novel’s end. The myriad concerns of this white ice skater’s life (as well as the aforementioned issues, Keira struggles with bullying at home and at school, money problems, and grade worries) threaten to overwhelm the narrative. Her supposedly all-consuming passion for figure skating is drowned by the surplus of topics and enthusiastic parenthetical asides and could be swapped with any other hobby with scarcely any noticeable change.
Bisexual teen protagonists are rare enough to give some value to a middling entry like this one, but it’s best for completists who’ve already read better choices, such as Hannah Moskowitz’s landmark Not Otherwise Specified (2015) . (Fiction. 12-15)Pub Date: May 16, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-55152-681-2
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Arsenal Pulp Press
Review Posted Online: March 5, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2017
This is no didactic near-future warning of present evils, but a cinematic adventure featuring endearing, compelling heroes
A gripping thriller in dystopic future Los Angeles.
Fifteen-year-olds June and Day live completely different lives in the glorious Republic. June is rich and brilliant, the only candidate ever to get a perfect score in the Trials, and is destined for a glowing career in the military. She looks forward to the day when she can join up and fight the Republic’s treacherous enemies east of the Dakotas. Day, on the other hand, is an anonymous street rat, a slum child who failed his own Trial. He's also the Republic's most wanted criminal, prone to stealing from the rich and giving to the poor. When tragedies strike both their families, the two brilliant teens are thrown into direct opposition. In alternating first-person narratives, Day and June experience coming-of-age adventures in the midst of spying, theft and daredevil combat. Their voices are distinct and richly drawn, from Day’s self-deprecating affection for others to June's Holmesian attention to detail. All the flavor of a post-apocalyptic setting—plagues, class warfare, maniacal soldiers—escalates to greater complexity while leaving space for further worldbuilding in the sequel.
This is no didactic near-future warning of present evils, but a cinematic adventure featuring endearing, compelling heroes . (Science fiction. 12-14)Pub Date: Nov. 29, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-399-25675-2
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: April 8, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2011
BOOK TO SCREEN
Characters to love, quips to snort at, insights to ponder: typical Spinelli.
For two teenagers, a small town’s annual cautionary ritual becomes both a life- and a death-changing experience.
On the second Wednesday in June, every eighth grader in Amber Springs, Pennsylvania, gets a black shirt, the name and picture of a teen killed the previous year through reckless behavior—and the silent treatment from everyone in town. Like many of his classmates, shy, self-conscious Robbie “Worm” Tarnauer has been looking forward to Dead Wed as a day for cutting loose rather than sober reflection…until he finds himself talking to a strange girl or, as she would have it, “spectral maiden,” only he can see or touch. Becca Finch is as surprised and confused as Worm, only remembering losing control of her car on an icy slope that past Christmas Eve. But being (or having been, anyway) a more outgoing sort, she sees their encounter as a sign that she’s got a mission. What follows, in a long conversational ramble through town and beyond, is a day at once ordinary yet rich in discovery and self-discovery—not just for Worm, but for Becca too, with a climactic twist that leaves both ready, or readier, for whatever may come next. Spinelli shines at setting a tongue-in-cheek tone for a tale with serious underpinnings, and as in Stargirl (2000), readers will be swept into the relationship that develops between this adolescent odd couple. Characters follow a White default.
Characters to love, quips to snort at, insights to ponder: typical Spinelli. (Fiction. 12-15)Pub Date: Aug. 3, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-593-30667-3
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 31, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2021
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