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WONDER

Name: WONDER
Author: Rachel Vail
ISBN: 0-531-05964-2

by Rachel Vail ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 1, 1991

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Seventh grade begins as a disaster: not only has Jessica's best friend Sheila made an alliance with five other girls who arrive dressed alike, but the new group dubs Jessica ``Wonder'' (as in Wonder Bread) in honor of the bold polka dots she's wearing. Thrown by suddenly becoming unpopular, Jessica stumbles through one awkward response after another, snubbing the hesitant overtures of Conor, a boy she really likes, and slow to realize that the best way to counter jibes is to join in the laughter. Fortunately, Conor persists, becoming a confidant as well as a first boyfriend—loyal even when Jessica assummes, wrongly, that he's been kissing Sheila during a party game. At first glance, this is just another story about friendships; but Vail has the measure of this vulnerable age and its painful concern about identity within the group. Gauche, likable Jess—seeing herself in an unlucky bird caught on a kite string, reverting to childhood in a romp with the boys in the creek, quietly saving money for Dad's troubled business, getting the crowd on her side at last by dressing as Wonder Bread for Halloween, or revealing her continuing affection for Sheila by defending her, to her own surprise—is a character to remember. A skillfully fashioned, accessible first novel, with no pat answers but a satisfying conclusion. (Fiction. 10-14)*justify no*

Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1991

ISBN: 0-531-05964-2

Page Count: 122

Publisher: Orchard

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1991

Categories:

CHILDREN'S GENERAL CHILDREN'S

- BOOK REVIEW
YOU AND ME, ANEMONE
by Rachel Vail ; illustrated by Chris Raschka

- BOOK REVIEW
SOMETIMES I KAPLOOM
by Rachel Vail ; illustrated by Hyewon Yum

- BOOK REVIEW
SOMETIMES I GRUMBLESQUINCH
by Rachel Vail ; illustrated by Hyewon Yum

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IQBAL

by Francesco D’Adamo ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 1, 2003

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This profoundly moving story is all the more impressive because of its basis in fact. Although the story is fictionalized, its most harrowing aspects are true: “Today, more than two hundred million children between the ages of five and seventeen are ‘economically active’ in the world.” Iqbal Masih, a real boy, was murdered at age 13. His killers have never been found, but it’s believed that a cartel of ruthless people overseeing the carpet industry, the “Carpet Mafia,” killed him. The carpet business in Pakistan is the backdrop for the story of a young Pakistani girl in indentured servitude to a factory owner, who also “owned” the bonds of 14 children, indentured by their own families for sorely needed money. Fatima’s first-person narrative grips from the beginning and inspires with every increment of pride and resistance the defiant Iqbal instills in his fellow workers. Although he was murdered for his efforts, Iqbal’s life was not in vain; the accounts here of children who were liberated through his and activist adults’ efforts will move readers for years to come. (Fiction. 10-14)

Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2003

ISBN: 0-689-85445-5

Page Count: 128

Publisher: Atheneum

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2003

Categories:

CHILDREN'S GENERAL CHILDREN'S

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DANIEL'S STORY

by Carol Matas ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 1, 1993

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After witnessing the rising tide of anti-Semitism in Nazi Germany, Daniel is suddenly transported, at age 14, from his comfortable life in Frankfurt to a Polish ghetto, then to Auschwitz and Buchenwald—losing most of his family along the way, seeing Nazi brutality of both the casual and the calculated kind, and recording atrocities with a smuggled camera (``What has happened to me?...Who am I? Where am I going?''). Matas, explicating an exhibit of photos and other materials at the new United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, creates a convincing composite youth and experience—fictional but carefully based on survivors' accounts. It's a savage story with no attempt to soften the culpability of the German people; Daniel's profound anger is easier to understand than is his father's compassion or his sister's plea to ``chose love. Always choose love.'' Daniel survives to be reunited, after the war, with his wife-to-be, but his dying friend's last word echoes beyond the happy ending: ``Remember...'' An unusual undertaking, effectively carried out. Chronology; glossary. (Fiction. 11-14)