by Rachel Tremblay ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 2, 2017
This playful fantasy deftly argues that teens can only benefit by widening their perspectives.
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This debut YA novel stars a heroine who leaves home to answer the call of a distant mountain peak.
In the land of Mirth, in the town of Slatfoot, 17-year-old Topaz has “long, bone white hair…chalky skin, and the palest of features.” She lives in a tree and tends to her strog, a helplessly rotund creature that lives in her backyard and generates gravel. This is her Fate, as read on her fingernails by an ayp named Murx, an ancient, towering being. (Ayps “walked on their fore-knuckles in a lumbering manner, but could become agile and swift when they had to fight.”) The strog depresses Topaz, but she also notices a “haunting glumness” in the rest of Slatfoot’s people, despite their smiles. One morning, she spies a “claw of light” on the distant mountain peak. She then feels a sharp pain in her stomach. Her “umbi-pit” (or bellybutton) swallows her limb-by-limb. The dull, washed-out Mirth is replaced by a land of flowers and greenery. After waking up back in Mirth, she prepares to head east toward the mountain peak. On her journey, she meets Uniz, a boy with a horn on his head whom she comes to rely on. He possesses a powerful stone coin that once belonged to Murx. Eventually, Topaz learns that she’s been chosen to liberate those with Fates determined by Murx. Despite the cute wordplay (“Snazzlepops!”), Tremblay’s offbeat fantasy is aimed at older teens. “The Truth Portal,” part one, constitutes more than half of the narrative, and “The Color Mayhem,” part two, picks up about a year later. While both sections are reminiscent of a Roald Dahl classic—The BFG, for example—the second reads like a parable. In it, the Slatfooters battle Mirth’s drab surroundings by adopting colors, then joining “color coteries,” such as the Red Specks and the White Stars. They grow obsessed with “out-coloring” one another and sipping “buish,” which causes giggling and daydreaming. These elements speak to the millennial (and even younger) generations’ preoccupation with identity politics and marijuana, both of which can be ruinous in excess. Topaz’s connection to her “grandmamâ” Seraphine shows that individuals always have the potential to keep growing.
This playful fantasy deftly argues that teens can only benefit by widening their perspectives.Pub Date: Nov. 2, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-9690172-0-2
Page Count: 260
Publisher: GrindSpark Press
Review Posted Online: Nov. 8, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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BOOK REVIEW
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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SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
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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