Morgan, a likable, troubled protagonist, hits all the requisite issue-book beats with a believable and sympathetic journey...
A 17-year-old girl knows she shouldn’t shoplift, but it’s the only way she can cope with the rage.
Morgan, a petite redhead, has been furious since her mother left. She loves her dad, but sometimes the anger gets the better of her. That’s when she steals: a lip gloss, a bikini, jewelry. Morgan’s luck finally runs out when a security guard sees her slip a pair of $185 sunglasses into her purse. Morgan, always one of the good kids, is now an offender, with required community service. For the rest of the summer, Morgan will spend her Saturday mornings at Rita’s Reruns, a nonprofit thrift shop. Luckily, Rita is lovely and supportive, if eccentric. And maybe it’s a small perk of the job that Rita’s nephew, Eli, is smoking hot. Blond, tanned, and fit, Eli’s recovering from a disabling hockey injury, and he’s super into Morgan. However, Morgan’s not willing to let Eli find out about her shoplifting; can she juggle a new relationship, her recovery, and a whole slew of lies? When the inevitable catastrophe comes, at least she’s prepared for it. The book follows a white default; main characters are white, and there is some diversity in secondary characters.
Morgan, a likable, troubled protagonist, hits all the requisite issue-book beats with a believable and sympathetic journey from self-loathing and crime toward healing . (Fiction. 13-15)Pub Date: July 31, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-06-257094-9
Page Count: 368
Publisher: HarperTeen
Review Posted Online: May 14, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
Refreshing and moving: avoids easy answers and saviors from the outside.
From Sudan to Maine, in free verse.
It's 1999 in Juba, and the second Sudanese civil war is in full swing. Viola is a Bari girl, and she lives every day in fear of the government soldiers occupying her town. In brief free-verse chapters, Viola makes Juba real: the dusty soil, the memories of sweetened condensed milk, the afternoons Viola spends braiding her cousin's hair. But there is more to Juba than family and hunger; there are the soldiers, and the danger, and the horrifying interactions with soldiers that Viola doesn't describe but only lets the reader infer. As soon as possible, Viola's mother takes the family to Cairo and then to Portland, Maine—but they won't all make it. First one and then another family member is brought down by the devastating war and famine. After such a journey, the culture shock in Portland is unsurprisingly overwhelming. "Portland to New York: 234 miles, / New York to Cairo: 5,621 miles, / Cairo to Juba: 1,730 miles." Viola tries to become an American girl, with some help from her Sudanese friends, a nice American boy and the requisite excellent teacher. But her mother, like the rest of the Sudanese elders, wants to run her home as if she were back in Juba, and the inevitable conflict is heartbreaking.
Refreshing and moving: avoids easy answers and saviors from the outside. (historical note) (Fiction. 13-15)Pub Date: May 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-7614-6267-5
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Marshall Cavendish
Review Posted Online: May 1, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2012
The author leaves Alice and friends posing for graduation pictures and looking forward to pre-college summer jobs aboard a...
The newest entry in a series that sits proudly in second place on the ALA’s list of Most Banned/Challenged titles of the 21st century (behind Harry) takes its insecure but sensible 17-year-old narrator through her final semester of high school.
Alice navigates past such fixed points as Senior Prom, Prank Day and graduation as well as more personal triumphs and tribulations, from getting one of those flat business envelopes from her first-choice college to finding out that her boyfriend Patrick will be spending the next year in Spain. As ever, Naylor-as-Alice fills the interstices with teachable moments including (but not limited to) the short-lived appearance of a “Restricted Reading” shelf in the school library, watching an older co-worker and her loving husband with their new baby, coping with stress-related insomnia, attending a pregnant classmate’s baby shower and wedding and reacting to a friend’s admission that she’s saving up for a labiaplasty. It's all embedded in a milieu of quotidian detail, familiar characters and memories from previous episodes that add both continuity and a matter-of-fact credibility to the advice and insight.
The author leaves Alice and friends posing for graduation pictures and looking forward to pre-college summer jobs aboard a cruise ship that will frame the next few volumes in this richly entertaining, reliable and informative guide to growing up. (Fiction. 13-15)Pub Date: May 10, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-4169-7553-3
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Atheneum
Review Posted Online: April 5, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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