Nothing could be more crucial than the start of seventh grade thinks Kat, but when Cheddar, the family dog is in a life-threatening accident, Kat goes off the rails. Normally well-behaved and responsible, Kat takes some shortcuts to get to the veterinary clinic that involves borrowing a bike and cutting school. The consequences are not so serious for cutting school, but the bike she borrows is stolen while Kat is getting the update on Cheddar. Kat never hesitates to admit her responsibility and her parents loan her the money until she can earn enough to pay for it herself. Kat’s friends, neighbors, and family are given small roles to play, yet are lively and help to flesh out this somewhat slight story. Once reassured that Cheddar will make it through his injuries, the notoriety of being accused of bike theft becomes the main conflict. A subplot related to the woman whose car hit Cheddar and also suffers from Alzheimer’s provides for some emotional eruptions as well as a few moments of introspection. However, rather than a rich blend of conflicts, the result is one that seems unfocused and scattered. The adults are mostly benevolent and wise; trusted to understand Kat, despite her own failures. An older sister is intriguingly sticky-fingered when it comes to Kat’s stuff, and their sibling exchanges provide the most consistently enjoyable dialogue. For light-hearted readers reluctant to truly examine moral conflicts, and wanting fiction that takes place in a safe world, this does the job. (Fiction. 11-13)
Pub Date: March 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-7613-1790-2
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Roaring Brook Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2003
BOOK REVIEW
Miah’s melodramatic death overshadows a tale as rich in social and personal insight as any of Woodson’s previous books.
In a meditative interracial love story with a wrenching climactic twist, Woodson (The House You Pass on the Way, 1997, etc.) offers an appealing pair of teenagers and plenty of intellectual grist, before ending her story with a senseless act of violence.
Jeremiah and Elisha bond from the moment they collide in the hall of their Manhattan prep school: He’s the only child of celebrity parents; she’s the youngest by ten years in a large family. Not only sharply sensitive to the reactions of those around them, Ellie and Miah also discover depths and complexities in their own intense feelings that connect clearly to their experiences, their social environment, and their own characters. In quiet conversations and encounters, Woodson perceptively explores varieties of love, trust, and friendship, as she develops well-articulated histories for both families. Suddenly Miah, forgetting his father’s warning never to be seen running in a white neighborhood, exuberantly dashes into a park and is shot down by police. The parting thought that, willy-nilly, time moves on will be a colder comfort for stunned readers than it evidently is for Ellie.
Miah’s melodramatic death overshadows a tale as rich in social and personal insight as any of Woodson’s previous books. (Fiction. 11-13)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-399-23112-9
Page Count: 181
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1998
The exodus of the Jews is breaking Dani’s heart: the exodus from Buenos Aires, that is. The 2001 Argentinian currency crisis has destroyed Buenos Aires’s economy, and all of Dani’s friends are moving to Israel or the United States. Dani’s own family, devastated by poverty and her father’s overwhelming depression, is headed to New York. There, in a wealthy suburb, Dani struggles to make friends in a huge, English-speaking public high school. Dani’s high-school problems follow a checklist of issues: autistic friend, mean popular girl, long-distance boyfriend hiding his new romance. The supporting characters act mostly as set dressing—from the bully who vanishes as soon as he has provoked another character’s redemption to the friend from ESL class who has no nationality or history of her own—and the comforting solutions are too pat. Enjoyable enough, so keep this on the shelf to fight misconceptions about terrorism, poverty, immigration and Jews—but don’t expect readers to come begging for more. (Historical fiction. 11-13)
Pub Date: July 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-545-15144-3
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: May 31, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2010
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