An enhanced movie tie-in e-pub of pseudonymous author James Frey’s slapdash, cliché-ridden foray into sci-fi for teenagers attempts to add value, though much of it is readily available for free on the Internet. A “message” from Pittacus Lore, nominal author and Elder of the planet Lorien, explains how nine children and nine guardians escaped to Earth before their planet was destroyed by the Mogadorians, but it can also be read online at http://iamnumberfourfans.com (advertised in the e-book). Likewise, online, readers can “meet” seven out of the 13 characters “introduced” in the ebook, learn the Lorien horoscope signs, find still images from the film and watch most of the same movie trailers (via http://www.findnumberfour.com/ and http://i-am-number-four.movie-trailer.com/). The unique e-book features include an extended text version of the opening scene of the movie (how Number Three dies in Africa); five brief grid-enhanced satellite videos of “Surveillance Clues,” locations supposedly key to the plot; the first two chapters of the upcoming sequel, The Power of Six; and the journal of Sarah, the human girlfriend of the alien hero John Smith (Number Four), in which she describes 11 scenes in the book from her point of view, to complement John’s. Fans must decide if it’s worth paying $3 more than the plain e-book for such meager morsels. (Science fiction. 12 & up)
Pub Date: Feb. 8, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-06-206042-6
Page Count: 480
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 1, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2011
A thought-provoking but flawed look into cults and homelessness.
The daughter of a well-to-do recovering alcoholic becomes homeless after her father joins a cult.
At Jamie's father's wedding to a woman from The Right & the Real Church of Christ, the church's spiritual leader insists that Jamie sign a Pledge committing herself to the Right & the Real. When she refuses, Jamie finds herself kicked out of her house. Determined and self-reliant, Jamie keeps her homelessness a secret, afraid that if she tells the truth to friends or authority figures, she will be sent to live with her drug-addicted mother in Los Angeles. After a dismal search for accommodations, she ends up at a dirty pay-by-the-week motel. There, she finds a mentor in LaVon, a grandfather and parolee who teaches her how to cook and clean and ultimately risks his own freedom to help Jamie and her father. Meanwhile, her boyfriend Josh, another church member, starts hiding the pair's relationship in increasingly humiliating ways; readers will find Jamie irritatingly oblivious to her feelings for another boy as this subplot continues. Jamie's family drama and her struggle to stay fed, sheltered and in school are compelling; LaVon, unfortunately, seems more an instrument for the white protagonist's growth than a person in his own right, a troubling role for a black character.
A thought-provoking but flawed look into cults and homelessness. (Fiction. 12 & up)Pub Date: April 26, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-399-25525-02
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: Feb. 14, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Pass.
This peculiar hybrid of fact-checked historical fiction and breathless bodice-ripper chronicles the romantic flings of four teens in 1799 France.
Eliza Monroe, daughter of future U.S. president James Monroe, arrives at a Paris finishing school where she’s befriended by fellow pupils Hortense de Beauharnais (daughter of Joséphine, stepdaughter of Napoleon Bonaparte) and Caroline Bonaparte (sister of Napoleon): beautiful, scheming frenemies. This promising, frothy-but-fun scenario is overshadowed by a less-successful melodrama. Madeleine de Pourtant, secretly engaged to Hortense’s brother, is the daughter of Gloriande, a star of the Comédie Française. Formerly enslaved in Martinique, Gloriande—drug-addicted, abusive, mentally unstable, a sexual omnivore discarded by her white aristocratic husband—resurrects the toxic “tragic mulatto” stereotype, as does Madeleine herself. The plot veers unsteadily from accounts of student entertainments, girlish crushes and romantic intrigues to Gloriande’s depraved brutality and Madeleine’s misery. Throughout, narrators Hortense, Eliza and Madeleine keep the emotional temperature constant, reacting to overheard gossip, the discovery of admirers and General Bonaparte’s power plays with the same feverish excitement. Dunlap has clearly done her history homework, but characterization is sketchy and the noisy plot not always credible. Annemarie Selinko’s classic historical romance Désirée (1953) offers what’s missing: compelling characters who made, and were made by, the world they lived in.
Pass. (Historical romance. 12 & up)Pub Date: April 10, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-59990-586-8
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: Feb. 4, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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