Living off spoonfuls of peanut butter and an occasional dented can of peas, Charley knows what it’s like to be poor. Times are hard and her mother is lucky to find work at all, even if the hours are long and the work is difficult. Feeling frightened and forgotten, Charley begins to explore her new home. Passing the gate of an old house, she sees an old woman rocking on her front porch, clutching a teddy bear and singing to herself. Charley’s convinced that the woman must be crazy, but her curiosity and the promise of graham crackers convince her to get to know Beryl a little better. Even after her mother warns her to stay away from the “pathetic old woman,” Charley cannot resist the lure of her new friend. Somewhere between working in the garden, drinking tea, and watching the sunset, Beryl teaches Charley that “all of us are poor, beautiful creatures.” With this new empathy, Charley can finally see beyond her mother’s feeble attempts to live inside a glossy magazine photo or her father’s inability to care for his family. In the impoverished world of the 1930s, Charley learns to find wealth all around her. A gentle story that ensnares while it enriches. (Fiction. 8-12)
Pub Date: April 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-7614-5118-8
Page Count: 144
Publisher: Marshall Cavendish
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2002
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Ultimately, Burg’s lyrical prose will make readers think about the common ground among peoples, despite inevitable...
Melding the colors of heartache and loss with painterly strokes, Burg creates a vivid work of art about a girl grieving for her recently deceased mother against a Third World backdrop.
Clare is not speaking to her father. She has vowed never to speak to him again. Which could be tough, since the pair just touched down in Malawi. There, Clare finds herself struck by the contrast between American wealth and the relatively bare-bones existence of her new friends. Drowning in mourning and enraged at the emptiness of grief, Clare is a hurricane of early-adolescent emotions. Her anger toward her father crackles like lightning in the treetops. She finds purpose, though, in teaching English to the younger children, which leads her out of grief. Burg’s imagery shimmers. “The girl talks to her mother in a language that sounds like fireworks, full of bursts and pops. She holds her hand over her mouth giggling.... She probably has so many minutes with her mother, she can’t even count them.” Her realization of the setting and appreciation for the Malawian people are so successful that they compensate for Clare's wallowing, which sometimes feels contrived.
Ultimately, Burg’s lyrical prose will make readers think about the common ground among peoples, despite inevitable disparities. (Fiction. 9-12)Pub Date: June 12, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-385-73471-4
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: March 20, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
Despite Amelia E. Rye’s confession that, “I’m a very good liar. I curse, too,” she comes clean to readers in her “personal memoir,” in which she relates the difficulties of living with her bad-tempered mother, who was pushing 50 when Amelia was born. Mrs. Rye is too worn-out to muster any motherly feelings for her daughter. She forces Amelia to wear hand-me-downs that are decades out of fashion, causing the friendless girl to become the brunt of cruel pranks. Everything changes the day Fancy walks into Amelia’s fourth-grade class. New to the upstate New York town, the friendly African-American girl offers friendship and acceptance, the very things Amelia has been hankering for. The story moves quickly, and in its four-year span Amelia learns the truth about her dysfunctional family’s unhappy past. The 1960s-era setting is mostly irrelevant to the plot, the racial tension is unconvincing and Amelia’s observations are too often wise beyond her years. What propels this otherwise undistinguished coming-of-age story forward is the strong bond of friendship that deepens over time between Amelia and Fancy. (Historical fiction. 10-12)
Pub Date: May 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-374-36131-0
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: June 23, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2010
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