Here’s hoping Watson’s teen debut will be followed by many more.
The summer before Maya and Nikki’s senior year of high school brings new challenges as their previously all-black neighborhood becomes attractive to other ethnic groups.
The twins, while still close, have been changing in recent years and now find they have very different views about the changes. Nikki is delighted with improvements in their surroundings, but Maya is concerned they come at too steep a price. When their best friend’s family is displaced, the rift deepens: Maya wants to maintain their connection to Essence, while Nikki has become close to newcomer Kate. Nikki may even be abandoning their long-held plan to attend Spelman College together. Their new principal appears willing to sacrifice many of the traditions the African-American students hold dear. And though Maya and Devin are a long-established couple, Maya finds herself drawn to Kate’s brother, Tony, despite her misgivings about interracial dating. Eventually, the students find a way to reach across the divides and honor the community’s past while embracing its changing present. Maya’s straightforward narration offers an intriguing look at how families and young people cope with community and personal change. Maya and her friends are well-drawn, successful characters surrounded by a realistic adult supporting cast. Readers may be surprised to find this multicultural story set in Portland, Oregon, but that just adds to its distinctive appeal.
Here’s hoping Watson’s teen debut will be followed by many more. (Fiction. 12-16)Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-5999-0668-3
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: Nov. 17, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
Quietly suspenseful, vividly character-driven, and poignant, with insights into cerebral palsy and the multiple meanings of...
A nonverbal teen becomes the “real-life password” to solving a terrible crime in this British import.
Sixteen-year-old Jemma has “no secrets of [her] own.” Quadriplegic due to cerebral palsy, she can’t move or speak and depends on her foster parents and her aide, Sarah, for everything from eating to using the bathroom. But people often share their secrets with her. After all, Jemma can never tell—even when Sarah’s sleazy boyfriend, Dan, hints at his involvement in a recent murder just before Sarah goes missing. But when innovative technology offers Jemma a chance to communicate, can she expose Dan’s secret before he silences her? Despite its suspenseful premise, the plot pales against Joelson’s (Girl in the Window, 2018) intimate, unflinching exploration of Jemma’s character; the book’s most powerful tension lies in Jemma’s simple, direct narration of her unrecognized, uncomfortably realistic frustrations and fears, such as patronizing adults who “don’t realize that [she has] a functioning brain” and her worry that her overwhelmed parents will stop fostering. Refreshingly, the author’s detailed depiction of augmentative and alternative communication explores both the joy of self-expression and the physical and mental effort it requires. Jemma’s bond with her chaotic but supportive foster family grounds the story, particularly her touching rapport with her younger foster brother, Finn, who’s autistic and also nonverbal. Most characters appear white.
Quietly suspenseful, vividly character-driven, and poignant, with insights into cerebral palsy and the multiple meanings of “family.” (Suspense. 12-15)Pub Date: Nov. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4926-9336-9
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Sourcebooks Fire
Review Posted Online: Aug. 12, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
Unabashedly didactic, but moving nonetheless.
A slacker learns life lessons from a slam-poet classmate in an inspiring if overly optimistic school story.
Grunge-rock devotee Sam has been trying to avoid the attention of teachers and other students ever since his mom left town two years earlier. Then the equally quiet Luis Cárdenas arrives in Sam’s English class, and meddlesome Ms. Cassidy seats the two of them together. Rumors fly about Luis: His brother is an infamous gangster, and there is a mean-looking scar on Luis’ neck. Sam doesn’t see Luis’ true colors until Ms. Cassidy announces that the class will have a poetry slam. Luis not only throws himself into creating a poem, he inspires Sam to do the same. The boys’ sudden, unmitigated enthusiasm for a school project may be hard to swallow, but there is something infectiously hopeful in Luis’ devotion to poetry, as well as in the inspiration Sam takes from old footage of Kurt Cobain. When Luis disappears after a gang fight, Sam, once a loner, teams up with classmates, teachers, neighbors and old friends to find out what has happened. Short, punchy sentences, paragraphs and chapters give the novel’s prose a sense of motion, and Luis’ poems, interspersed with the narrative, give readers added insight into Luis’ character.
Unabashedly didactic, but moving nonetheless. (Fiction. 12-16)Pub Date: Aug. 27, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-8050-9514-2
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Christy Ottaviano/Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: May 28, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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