A slow-burn of emotional exploration.
An 11-year-old struggles to connect with his past and survive the tumult of his present.
From recollections of Papi, his late Haitian father, to what happened yesterday, Lalo Lespérance’s memories feel “like secret notes in bottles floating in the ocean.” Even when he finds one, it’s “usually vague or written in code.” Now that Covid has forced everyone online for school, his neighbor Vivi and her grandmother Alita welcome Lalo and his 17-year-old brother, Claudio, over to use the internet for online classes. Lalo, whose mom is Mexican American, loves to escape into Alita’s stories about Mexico, especially ones about magic. One day, Vivi and Lalo spy a strange motor home in the parking lot of their apartment building. Vivi believes it belongs to a roba chico, or kidnapper. As they devise ways to catch him, Lalo discovers a mysterious old-fashioned radio in a storage closet. He becomes certain that the radio is helping him find his memories—but he isn’t sure if remembering is good or bad. Diederich immerses readers in Lalo’s confused emotional landscape: The uncertainties surrounding his identity, friendships, and place in his family push readers to explore these questions, both in terms of Lalo and themselves. The definition of memory and how integral it is to understanding oneself are heavy themes made accessible for younger audiences without sacrificing depth.
A slow-burn of emotional exploration. (Fiction. 10-14)Pub Date: Sept. 12, 2023
ISBN: 9780593354285
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: July 13, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
SEEN & HEARD
Riveting, inspiring, and sometimes hilarious.
If you made a recording to be heard by the aliens who found the iPod, what would you record?
For 11-year-old Alex Petroski, it's easy. He records everything. He records the story of how he travels to New Mexico to a rocket festival with his dog, Carl Sagan, and his rocket. He records finding out that a man with the same name and birthday as his dead father has an address in Las Vegas. He records eating at Johnny Rockets for the first time with his new friends, who are giving him a ride to find his dead father (who might not be dead!), and losing Carl Sagan in the wilds of Las Vegas, and discovering he has a half sister. He even records his own awful accident. Cheng delivers a sweet, soulful debut novel with a brilliant, refreshing structure. His characters manage to come alive through the “transcript” of Alex’s iPod recording, an odd medium that sounds like it would be confusing but really works. Taking inspiration from the Voyager Golden Record released to space in 1977, Alex, who explains he has “light brown skin,” records all the important moments of a journey that takes him from a family of two to a family of plenty.
Riveting, inspiring, and sometimes hilarious. (Fiction. 10-14)Pub Date: Feb. 28, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-399-18637-0
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: Oct. 18, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
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