A sensitive boy with a troubled past and an artistic girl whose cache of wishes has almost expired find solace and friendship in a magical valley.
Twelve-year-old Peter and his family have recently moved to rural Texas Hill Country to escape his issues with bullies in San Antonio. Peter’s unemployed father urges him to “toughen up,” while his resentful, overworked mother can’t understand her withdrawn son. An outsider in a loud family that considers him a weirdo, Peter retreats to an isolated valley for solitude. Here he finds Annie, also 12, who’s staying at a nearby camp. “[W]eird and bossy,” Annie’s passionate about art, and she and Peter bond in the valley’s protective atmosphere. Annie calls herself a “wish girl,” but Peter eventually realizes she’s a Make-a-Wish kid whose leukemia has returned. When local bullies terrorize Peter, he opts to run away with Annie, who’s avoiding more cancer treatment, but their escape’s thwarted, and Peter’s forced to speak out. As in Loftin’s Nightingale’s Nest (2014), the first-person narration in lyrical prose adds immediacy to Peter’s and Annie’s life-challenging situations as their transforming friendship plays out in a setting suffused with magical realism.
A moving, mesmerizing story of wishing, listening and hope for discerning readers. (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Feb. 24, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-59514-686-1
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Razorbill/Penguin
Review Posted Online: Oct. 22, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2014
Categories: CHILDREN'S SOCIAL THEMES
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BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Catrina narrates the story of her mixed-race (Latino/white) family’s move from Southern California to Bahía de la Luna on the Northern California coast.
Dad has a new job, but it’s little sister Maya’s lungs that motivate the move: she has had cystic fibrosis since birth—a degenerative breathing condition. Despite her health, Maya loves adventure, even if her lungs suffer for it and even when Cat must follow to keep her safe. When Carlos, a tall, brown, and handsome teen Ghost Tour guide introduces the sisters to the Bahía ghosts—most of whom were Spanish-speaking Mexicans when alive—they fascinate Maya and she them, but the terrified Cat wants only to get herself and Maya back to safety. When the ghost adventure leads to Maya’s hospitalization, Cat blames both herself and Carlos, which makes seeing him at school difficult. As Cat awakens to the meaning of Halloween and Day of the Dead in this strange new home, she comes to understand the importance of the ghosts both to herself and to Maya. Telgemeier neatly balances enough issues that a lesser artist would split them into separate stories and delivers as much delight textually as visually. The backmatter includes snippets from Telgemeier’s sketchbook and a photo of her in Día makeup.
Telgemeier’s bold colors, superior visual storytelling, and unusual subject matter will keep readers emotionally engaged and unable to put down this compelling tale. (Graphic fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Sept. 13, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-545-54061-2
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: July 2, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2016
Categories: GENERAL GRAPHIC NOVELS & COMICS | CHILDREN'S SOCIAL THEMES | CHILDREN'S FAMILY
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The author of the Anastasia books as well as more serious fiction (Rabble Starkey, 1987) offers her first historical fiction—a story about the escape of the Jews from Denmark in 1943.
Five years younger than Lisa in Carol Matas' Lisa's War (1989), Annemarie Johansen has, at 10, known three years of Nazi occupation. Though ever cautious and fearful of the ubiquitous soldiers, she is largely unaware of the extent of the danger around her; the Resistance kept even its participants safer by telling them as little as possible, and Annemarie has never been told that her older sister Lise died in its service. When the Germans plan to round up the Jews, the Johansens take in Annemarie's friend, Ellen Rosen, and pretend she is their daughter; later, they travel to Uncle Hendrik's house on the coast, where the Rosens and other Jews are transported by fishing boat to Sweden. Apart from Lise's offstage death, there is little violence here; like Annemarie, the reader is protected from the full implications of events—but will be caught up in the suspense and menace of several encounters with soldiers and in Annemarie's courageous run as courier on the night of the escape. The book concludes with the Jews' return, after the war, to homes well kept for them by their neighbors.
A deftly told story that dramatizes how Danes appointed themselves bodyguards—not only for their king, who was in the habit of riding alone in Copenhagen, but for their Jews. (Historical fiction. 9-12)Pub Date: April 1, 1989
ISBN: 0547577095
Page Count: 156
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: Oct. 17, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1989
Categories: CHILDREN'S SOCIAL THEMES | CHILDREN'S HISTORICAL FICTION
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