At the end of the term, a new student who is black and Vietnamese finds a morsel of hope that she too will find a place in...
This is almost like a play for 18 voices, as Grimes (Stepping Out with Grandma Mac, not reviewed, etc.) moves her narration among a group of high school students in the Bronx.
The English teacher, Mr. Ward, accepts a set of poems from Wesley, his response to a month of reading poetry from the Harlem Renaissance. Soon there’s an open-mike poetry reading, sponsored by Mr. Ward, every month, and then later, every week. The chapters in the students’ voices alternate with the poems read by that student, defiant, shy, terrified. All of them, black, Latino, white, male, and female, talk about the unease and alienation endemic to their ages, and they do it in fresh and appealing voices. Among them: Janelle, who is tired of being called fat; Leslie, who finds friendship in another who has lost her mom; Diondra, who hides her art from her father; Tyrone, who has faith in words and in his “moms”; Devon, whose love for books and jazz gets jeers. Beyond those capsules are rich and complex teens, and their tentative reaching out to each other increases as through the poems they also find more of themselves. Steve writes: “But hey! Joy / is not a crime, though / some people / make it seem so.”
At the end of the term, a new student who is black and Vietnamese finds a morsel of hope that she too will find a place in the poetry. (Fiction. 12-15)Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-8037-2569-8
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2001
Tapped for an international junior tournament, a small-town high school basketball star goes one-on-one with a hostile teammate and with his own fears. Jim Doyle arrives in training camp to discover that he's already on inner-city star Augustus LeMay's bad side: partly for edging out Augustus's cousin, mostly for being white. Jim proves himself and it's off to face Europe's best, but the excitement that carries him through the early rounds turns to dread after the team receives a death threat. In a melodramatic happy ending, the characters all get what they need: Seconds after sinking an impossible winning shot, Jim takes a terrorist's bullet; he wakes up to find Augustus's contempt replaced by respect, and, more importantly, his fear of failing burned away. Though the contrast between Jim's naãvetÇ and his teammate's mean-streets bitterness is sometimes overdone, Klass (California Blue, 1994, etc.) makes Jim's apprehension, fueled by unhappy memories, seem very real, and the final game with Spain is one of the most enthralling climaxes in recent sports fiction. The plot runs a predictable, tried-and-true course, but the author festoons it with frank, thoughtful observations about fathers and sons, city versus small town values, race, friendship, and courage. (Fiction. 12-15)
Pub Date: March 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-590-48590-3
Page Count: 232
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 1995
It's hard to ask for more than this: an old-fashioned story that starts with an orphan, includes a mystery, and ends happily. In 1867 Germany, young Boniface Schroll is taken away from his aunt, who has been deemed incompetent to raise a boy, and sent to live with his uncle, a well-to-do mayor in the far off village of Graab. At first, Boniface's uncle seems to be a cold and orderly man of the law, and Boniface isn't sure he belongs under his care. He chronicles his adjustment to his uncle and the village community through an amiable, perceptive narrative. Boniface experiences some of the pitfalls of the provincial life through his secret friendship with an outsider, Christian Knapp, the son of a notorious robber; the Robber Knapp is a wrongfully persecuted man, and Boniface holds the key to his innocence. When Boniface shows his brave and upstanding character, his uncle makes a believable turn as a father figure. This is a sophisticated read, for those who like to escape to times past and lands far away, with a translator's note to provide context. (glossary) (Fiction. 12-14)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1997
ISBN: 0-8050-5599-1
Page Count: 210
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1997
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