Lovely.
Young Anna narrates in lilting, free verse her trials, tribulations, and triumphs during the 1881 Land War in Drumlish, Ireland.
“Sounds,” the first of 31 short chapters in the book’s first section, starts with high drama. While outside pulling up chickweed for tea, Anna hears screams and a crashing sound. “Dust rises up: / the house of five girls / and a mam is gone. / They’re forced out on the road, / maybe to starve.” Readers soon learn that English aristocrats have seized Irish properties, feeling empowered to arbitrarily raise rents and raze dwellings. However, what compels further reading is an immediate bond with Anna. Giff has the rare gift of using few words—but exactly the right ones—to evoke strong and varied images and feelings. Readers will be riveted as Anna tries her hardest to live up to her dying mam’s requests: that Anna take care of her developmentally disabled little sister, Nuala; keep the family’s home safe; and learn to read. There are several episodes of gripping suspense, including Anna and Nuala’s fugitive flight to Aunt Ethna’s house and encounters between a bailiff and a justifiably angry crowd. There are also tender and humorous moments. Traditional customs and language are woven into the tale as deftly as Aunt Ethna weaves at her loom. Despite the value attached to reading, it is a different skill that enables Anna to earn money—a welcome, realistic plot point. Characters all present white.
Lovely. (glossary, photographs, author’s note) (Historical verse fiction. 10-14)Pub Date: Aug. 13, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-8234-3955-3
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Holiday House
Review Posted Online: June 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2019
An endearing protagonist runs the first, fast leg of Reynolds' promising relay.
Castle “Ghost” Cranshaw feels like he’s been running ever since his dad pulled that gun on him and his mom—and used it.
His dad’s been in jail three years now, but Ghost still feels the trauma, which is probably at the root of the many “altercations” he gets into at middle school. When he inserts himself into a practice for a local elite track team, the Defenders, he’s fast enough that the hard-as-nails coach decides to put him on the team. Ghost is surprised to find himself caring enough about being on the team that he curbs his behavior to avoid “altercations.” But Ma doesn’t have money to spare on things like fancy running shoes, so Ghost shoplifts a pair that make his feet feel impossibly light—and his conscience correspondingly heavy. Ghost’s narration is candid and colloquial, reminiscent of such original voices as Bud Caldwell and Joey Pigza; his level of self-understanding is both believably childlike and disarming in its perception. He is self-focused enough that secondary characters initially feel one-dimensional, Coach in particular, but as he gets to know them better, so do readers, in a way that unfolds naturally and pleasingly. His three fellow “newbies” on the Defenders await their turns to star in subsequent series outings. Characters are black by default; those few white people in Ghost’s world are described as such.
An endearing protagonist runs the first, fast leg of Reynolds' promising relay. (Fiction. 10-14)Pub Date: Aug. 30, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4814-5015-7
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Caitlyn Dlouhy/Atheneum
Review Posted Online: July 19, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2016
PROFILES
SEEN & HEARD
Rich and strange (and kitted out with an eye-catching cover), but stronger in the set pieces than the internal logic.
Chainani works an elaborate sea change akin to Gregory Maguire’s Wicked (1995), though he leaves the waters muddied.
Every four years, two children, one regarded as particularly nice and the other particularly nasty, are snatched from the village of Gavaldon by the shadowy School Master to attend the divided titular school. Those who survive to graduate become major or minor characters in fairy tales. When it happens to sweet, Disney princess–like Sophie and her friend Agatha, plain of features, sour of disposition and low of self-esteem, they are both horrified to discover that they’ve been dropped not where they expect but at Evil and at Good respectively. Gradually—too gradually, as the author strings out hundreds of pages of Hogwarts-style pranks, classroom mishaps and competitions both academic and romantic—it becomes clear that the placement wasn’t a mistake at all. Growing into their true natures amid revelations and marked physical changes, the two spark escalating rivalry between the wings of the school. This leads up to a vicious climactic fight that sees Good and Evil repeatedly switching sides. At this point, readers are likely to feel suddenly left behind, as, thanks to summary deus ex machina resolutions, everything turns out swell(ish).
Rich and strange (and kitted out with an eye-catching cover), but stronger in the set pieces than the internal logic. (Fantasy. 11-13)Pub Date: May 14, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-06-210489-2
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Feb. 12, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2013
BOOK TO SCREEN
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