A straightforward, touching account that nevertheless doesn’t go very deep.
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 28, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2020
Though much of this earnest effort reads like an after-school special, its portrayal of characters with rarely depicted...
Born without arms, white “problem-solving ninja” Aven Green can do almost anything with her feet instead—even solve a mystery.
“Now that I’m thirteen years old, I don’t need much help with anything. True story.” Aven’s adoptive parents have always encouraged her independence. She’s never felt self-conscious among her friends in Kansas, playing soccer and guitar and mischievously spinning wild yarns about losing her arms. But when her father suddenly gets a job managing Stagecoach Pass, a run-down theme park in Arizona, tales of alligator wrestling can’t stop her new classmates’ gawking. Making friends with Connor, a self-conscious white boy with Tourette’s syndrome, and Zion, a shy, overweight, black boy, allows her to blend in between them. Contrasted with the boys’ shyness, Aven’s tough love and occasional insensitivity provide a glimpse of how—and why—attitudes toward disability can vary. While investigating the park’s suspiciously absent owner, the kids discover clues with eerie ties to Aven. The mystery’s twist ending is somewhat fairy-tale–esque, but Connor’s Tourette’s support-group meetings and Aven’s witty, increasingly honest discussions of the pros and cons of “lack of armage” give the book excellent educational potential.
Though much of this earnest effort reads like an after-school special, its portrayal of characters with rarely depicted disabilities is informative, funny, and supportive. (Fiction. 9-13)Pub Date: Sept. 5, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-4549-2345-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Sterling
Review Posted Online: June 13, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2017
Readers will cheer the birth of this comedian.
Eleven-year-old Yumi Chung doesn’t have anyone to sit with at lunch, but she secretly harbors dreams of becoming a comedian. Shy + Asian + Girl = Comedian? Why, yes. Yes, it does.
Winston Preparatory Academy is a shy person’s nightmare. Yumi hides from the beautiful girls and the bullies who call her “Yu-meat” because she smells like her parents’ Korean barbecue restaurant. This summer, her parents are demanding that she go to Korean summer school, or hagwon, to get a near-perfect score on the high school entrance exam—because that is the only way to attend an elite college, like her superachiever sister, a 20-year-old med student. Yumi collects all of her fears and frustrations (and jokes) in her Super-Secret Comedy Notebook. When a case of mistaken identity allows her to attend a comedy camp taught by her YouTube idol, Yumi is too panicked to correct the problem—and then it spirals out of control. With wonderful supporting characters, strong pacing, and entertaining comedy bits, debut author Kim has woven a pop song of immigrant struggle colliding with comedy and Korean barbecue. With their feet in two different cultures, readers listen in on honest conversations, full of halting English and unspoken truths painting a realistic picture of 21st-century first-generation Americans—at least a Korean version. By becoming someone else, Yumi learns more about herself and her family in an authentic and hilarious way.
Readers will cheer the birth of this comedian. (Fiction. 9-12)Pub Date: March 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-525-55497-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Kokila
Review Posted Online: Nov. 23, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
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