Together in their 1951 Chrysler station wagon, the Hernández family makes their annual seven-hour journey from Piedras Negras, Mexico, to West Texas to harvest cotton.
Papá, Mamá, Lala, Esmeralda, Juan Daniel, Oscar, and Junior are a loving, prayerful, and playful traditional Mexican family. Almost 14, narrator Junior is the eldest and, like his siblings, has picked cotton since he was 8—the age each Hernández child joins the workforce. What initially reads like a story about a farm-working family’s experience turns out to be, as the title suggests, more about Junior’s hopes for himself as a growing young man. Will he ever fall in love like his parents or be a hardworking man like his father? A romantic, oftentimes nostalgic tone accompanies Junior’s true-to-age concerns—born of Alvarado’s own experiences—with the exhausting work of picking cotton and the racism that comes with it creating more of an atmospheric backdrop than a central theme. When a near-death experience pulls Junior’s narration even further inward, the story loses grounding and momentum. Readers seeking a more descriptive and emotionally nuanced take on a young person’s experience during a harvest would appreciate Cynthia Kadohata’s The Thing About Luck (2013). Baeza Ventura’s Spanish translation follows the original English version, which adds a richness to the story for Spanish-language readers.
A straightforward, touching account that nevertheless doesn’t go very deep. (Historical fiction. 9-14)Pub Date: May 31, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-55885-900-5
Page Count: 140
Publisher: Piñata Books/Arte Público
Review Posted Online: March 29, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2020
Categories: CHILDREN'S HISTORICAL FICTION | CHILDREN'S FAMILY | CHILDREN'S SOCIAL THEMES
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The author of the Anastasia books as well as more serious fiction (Rabble Starkey, 1987) offers her first historical fiction—a story about the escape of the Jews from Denmark in 1943.
Five years younger than Lisa in Carol Matas' Lisa's War (1989), Annemarie Johansen has, at 10, known three years of Nazi occupation. Though ever cautious and fearful of the ubiquitous soldiers, she is largely unaware of the extent of the danger around her; the Resistance kept even its participants safer by telling them as little as possible, and Annemarie has never been told that her older sister Lise died in its service. When the Germans plan to round up the Jews, the Johansens take in Annemarie's friend, Ellen Rosen, and pretend she is their daughter; later, they travel to Uncle Hendrik's house on the coast, where the Rosens and other Jews are transported by fishing boat to Sweden. Apart from Lise's offstage death, there is little violence here; like Annemarie, the reader is protected from the full implications of events—but will be caught up in the suspense and menace of several encounters with soldiers and in Annemarie's courageous run as courier on the night of the escape. The book concludes with the Jews' return, after the war, to homes well kept for them by their neighbors.
A deftly told story that dramatizes how Danes appointed themselves bodyguards—not only for their king, who was in the habit of riding alone in Copenhagen, but for their Jews. (Historical fiction. 9-12)Pub Date: April 1, 1989
ISBN: 0547577095
Page Count: 156
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: Oct. 17, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1989
Categories: CHILDREN'S SOCIAL THEMES | CHILDREN'S HISTORICAL FICTION
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Poignant, respectful, and historically accurate while pulsating with emotional turmoil, adventure, and suspense.
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In the midst of political turmoil, how do you escape the only country that you’ve ever known and navigate a new life? Parallel stories of three different middle school–aged refugees—Josef from Nazi Germany in 1938, Isabel from 1994 Cuba, and Mahmoud from 2015 Aleppo—eventually intertwine for maximum impact.
Three countries, three time periods, three brave protagonists. Yet these three refugee odysseys have so much in common. Each traverses a landscape ruled by a dictator and must balance freedom, family, and responsibility. Each initially leaves by boat, struggles between visibility and invisibility, copes with repeated obstacles and heart-wrenching loss, and gains resilience in the process. Each third-person narrative offers an accessible look at migration under duress, in which the behavior of familiar adults changes unpredictably, strangers exploit the vulnerabilities of transients, and circumstances seem driven by random luck. Mahmoud eventually concludes that visibility is best: “See us….Hear us. Help us.” With this book, Gratz accomplishes a feat that is nothing short of brilliant, offering a skillfully wrought narrative laced with global and intergenerational reverberations that signal hope for the future. Excellent for older middle grade and above in classrooms, book groups, and/or communities looking to increase empathy for new and existing arrivals from afar.
Poignant, respectful, and historically accurate while pulsating with emotional turmoil, adventure, and suspense. (maps, author’s note) (Historical fiction. 10-14)Pub Date: July 25, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-545-88083-1
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: May 10, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2017
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