by Paul Schumacher ‧ RELEASE DATE: Dec. 16, 2016
A well-crafted, if conventional, time-travel tale.
A teenager travels back to 1941 and encounters his grandfather in this YA debut.
It’s 2004. John, age 18, is mostly uninterested when his elderly grandfather presents him with a mysterious box one day: “The box was timeworn and resembled a long-lost treasure chest….The musty smell was of a rarely opened attic, and it had a curved top like a prop from an old pirate movie.” John is disappointed that the items contained within don’t possess much monetary value, but he nevertheless sticks the thing in his baseball bag before heading to his game. Later, after being struck in the head by a fly ball, John wakes up on the field of a different game: one that took place in 1941 that his grandfather has been telling John about all his life. John meets his grandfather’s younger self, Bill, and gets to know him as a peer. What’s more, John gets to live in his same house—it was standing back in 1941—but with an entirely different family. One that includes (unlike John’s 2004) a loving father. With his grandfather at his side, John gets to experience what being a teenager was like back in the early ’40s: both the things that were different and the things that never change. “I always assumed school was the same no matter which decade I attended,” John observes. “Boy was I wrong.” He also gets to see a side of his grandfather that he’s never observed before. Schumacher tells his story in clear prose, and John’s first-person narrative is buoyed by an infectious enthusiasm for the world around him. The objects in the grandfather’s box are used as representative totems to unlock different avenues in the tale, and the author makes good use of his setting, which successfully conjures a small Midwestern town right on the cusp of World War II. The novel does not drift far from the expected path, and the ending is a bit formulaic. But overall the book is a pleasant exploration of familial bonds across generations and the timelessness of youth.
A well-crafted, if conventional, time-travel tale.Pub Date: Dec. 16, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-9979553-0-9
Page Count: 270
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: March 2, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2006
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
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by J.D. Salinger ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 15, 1951
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
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