A solid resource for teens seeking advice on planning their futures.
Wooster offers teens too shy or scared to be themselves the stories of others who have embraced their true selves.
In peppy prose, the author exhorts teens: instead of following the crowd, focus on “discovering and becoming the person you want to be”—aka igniting your spark. Chapters not only provide suggestions for igniting readers’ sparks in school, hobbies and activities, and relationships, but how to face failures and boost willpower. The text is peppered with spark igniters and extinguishers, role-plays, quizzes, and examples of all kinds of success stories. It's a bit cluttered and doesn't have a lot of flow, but the information contained is solid. Perhaps there's too much emphasis on not being one of many—what about teens who are authentically interested in doing the same as most of their peers?—yet the positive, cheerleading tone will certainly reassure any teens who are scared of being “different.” The teen success stories are drawn from all fields, from science to art, business to philanthropy. The section on toxic friendship is particularly valuable.
A solid resource for teens seeking advice on planning their futures. (notes, further resources) (Nonfiction. 12-14)Pub Date: Jan. 10, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-58270-565-1
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Beyond Words/Aladdin
Review Posted Online: Sept. 18, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
Stands out neither as a folk-tale retelling, a coming-of-age story, nor a Holocaust novel.
A Holocaust tale with a thin “Hansel and Gretel” veneer from the author of The Devil’s Arithmetic (1988).
Chaim and Gittel, 14-year-old twins, live with their parents in the Lodz ghetto, forced from their comfortable country home by the Nazis. The siblings are close, sharing a sign-based twin language; Chaim stutters and communicates primarily with his sister. Though slowly starving, they make the best of things with their beloved parents, although it’s more difficult once they must share their tiny flat with an unpleasant interfaith couple and their Mischling (half-Jewish) children. When the family hears of their impending “wedding invitation”—the ghetto idiom for a forthcoming order for transport—they plan a dangerous escape. Their journey is difficult, and one by one, the adults vanish. Ultimately the children end up in a fictional child labor camp, making ammunition for the German war effort. Their story effectively evokes the dehumanizing nature of unremitting silence. Nevertheless, the dense, distancing narrative (told in a third-person contemporaneous narration focused through Chaim with interspersed snippets from Gittel’s several-decades-later perspective) has several consistency problems, mostly regarding the relative religiosity of this nominally secular family. One theme seems to be frustration with those who didn’t fight back against overwhelming odds, which makes for a confusing judgment on the suffering child protagonists.
Stands out neither as a folk-tale retelling, a coming-of-age story, nor a Holocaust novel. (author’s note) (Historical fiction. 12-14)Pub Date: March 6, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-399-25778-0
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Philomel
Review Posted Online: Dec. 20, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2018
In Nina's world, children have GPS trackers until they turn 18, and surveillance satellites monitor for subversive talk. Tight control stands between young women and a threatening sexuality; at 16, teenage girls get tattooed with their age and become fair game. Fifteen-year-old Nina, unlike her friends, dreads becoming “sex-teen.” Her life is too confusing without extra complications: Her mother's just died, and Nina's half sister Dee might be legally claimed by her father to be a servant—or worse. How does the cute boy who might be a member of the resistance fit into Nina's life? And had Nina's mother been part of the resistance herself? Nina doesn't want to get involved, but she needs to protect Dee. A large suspension of disbelief is required for the dysfunctional gender politics. (How did the situation get so broken? How do teenage boys and girls manage to be friends when they're only weeks or months away from effectively legal rape?) Otherwise, a fun little thriller for the abstinence romantics. (Science fiction. 12-14)
Pub Date: Jan. 6, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-14-241771-3
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Speak/Penguin
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2010
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