Gabriel, 14, and his dad Sumner fly to L.A. for the summer, leaving his newly divorced mom on a bicycle trip with her boyfriend; Sumner, second-grade teacher and author of a children's book about Timmy, an otter, has a film contract. Gabriel is mortified by the way Timmy, in puppet guise, invades every conversation, private or public; he's also apprehensive about adapting to California after staid Missouri. Indeed, the other denizens of their condo are a touch bizarre: Cassandra, a roller-blading psychic; gentle Mr. Palmer, an elderly nudist widower; Mona, who acts in commercials, and her camcorder- wielding daughter Tess, whose scintillating repartee is as relentless—and as genuinely comical—as Timmy's. What Gabriel learns, in the end, is that people are people, despite the ambience and facades. Meanwhile, there's a rather long getting- acquainted time, effectively buoyed by the offbeat, sympathetically drawn characters, remarkably imaginative imagery and witty dialogue, and the warming relationship between Tess and Gabriel (caught kissing in the garage, their innocence is real, their parents' conservative caveats refreshing). Like Zindel, Koertge revs up the fantastic high jinks toward the end; then, he closes with his own generous brand of informed reconciliation between parents and children. Another strong showing from a fine author; more conventional and realistic than Francesca Block's books about L.A., and it makes a rewarding comparison with them. (Fiction. 12-16)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-316-50104-2
Page Count: 177
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1992
At the end of the term, a new student who is black and Vietnamese finds a morsel of hope that she too will find a place in...
This is almost like a play for 18 voices, as Grimes (Stepping Out with Grandma Mac, not reviewed, etc.) moves her narration among a group of high school students in the Bronx.
The English teacher, Mr. Ward, accepts a set of poems from Wesley, his response to a month of reading poetry from the Harlem Renaissance. Soon there’s an open-mike poetry reading, sponsored by Mr. Ward, every month, and then later, every week. The chapters in the students’ voices alternate with the poems read by that student, defiant, shy, terrified. All of them, black, Latino, white, male, and female, talk about the unease and alienation endemic to their ages, and they do it in fresh and appealing voices. Among them: Janelle, who is tired of being called fat; Leslie, who finds friendship in another who has lost her mom; Diondra, who hides her art from her father; Tyrone, who has faith in words and in his “moms”; Devon, whose love for books and jazz gets jeers. Beyond those capsules are rich and complex teens, and their tentative reaching out to each other increases as through the poems they also find more of themselves. Steve writes: “But hey! Joy / is not a crime, though / some people / make it seem so.”
At the end of the term, a new student who is black and Vietnamese finds a morsel of hope that she too will find a place in the poetry. (Fiction. 12-15)Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-8037-2569-8
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2001
The wish-fulfilling title and sun-washed, catalog-beautiful teens on the cover will be enticing for girls looking for a...
Han’s leisurely paced, somewhat somber narrative revisits several beach-house summers in flashback through the eyes of now 15-year-old Isabel, known to all as Belly.
Belly measures her growing self by these summers and by her lifelong relationship with the older boys, her brother and her mother’s best friend’s two sons. Belly’s dawning awareness of her sexuality and that of the boys is a strong theme, as is the sense of summer as a separate and reflective time and place: Readers get glimpses of kisses on the beach, her best friend’s flirtations during one summer’s visit, a first date. In the background the two mothers renew their friendship each year, and Lauren, Belly’s mother, provides support for her friend—if not, unfortunately, for the children—in Susannah’s losing battle with breast cancer. Besides the mostly off-stage issue of a parent’s severe illness there’s not much here to challenge most readers—driving, beer-drinking, divorce, a moment of surprise at the mothers smoking medicinal pot together.
The wish-fulfilling title and sun-washed, catalog-beautiful teens on the cover will be enticing for girls looking for a diversion. (Fiction. 12-14)Pub Date: May 5, 2009
ISBN: 978-1-4169-6823-8
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2009
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