by Saci Lloyd ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 22, 2009
With eco-thrillers rapidly becoming the new vampire romance, it takes a special one to stand out. Laura Brown’s diary of her life in the year after the Great Storm, the year England rations carbon use, transcends the genre’s didacticism. While London suffers floods, droughts, riots and disease, Laura’s self-centeredness—she just wants to play with her band and date cute Ravi from next door—keeps her story grounded. The everyday matter of young-adult fiction, from dating to parental divorce to failing grades, are equally meaningful when set against a backdrop of cholera and black markets. The diary format contributes to readers’ sense of the frenetic pace of Laura’s collapsing world, and the solidly realized London setting provides contrast to the Blitz Spirit of World War II. While the adults of London revert to crazed, self-obsessed philosophies, the teenagers just try to create a present and a future in a world destroyed. None of these Londoners is perfect, least of all Laura, but in a hellish year they all learn to get over themselves. Enough, at least. (Science fiction. 13-15)
Pub Date: April 22, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-8234-2190-9
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Holiday House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2009
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by Lensey Namioka ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 1, 1999
Namioka (Den of the White Fox, 1997, etc.) offers readers a glimpse of the ritual of foot-binding, and a surprising heroine whose life is determined by her rejection of that ritual. Ailin is spirited—her family thinks uncontrollable—even at age five, in her family’s compound in China in 1911, she doesn’t want to have her feet bound, especially after Second Sister shows Ailin her own bound feet and tells her how much it hurts. Ailin can see already how bound feet will restrict her movements, and prevent her from running and playing. Her father takes the revolutionary step of permitting her to leave her feet alone, even though the family of Ailin’s betrothed then breaks off the engagement. Ailin goes to the missionary school and learns English; when her father dies and her uncle cuts off funds for tuition, she leaves her family to become a nanny for an American missionary couple’s children. She learns all the daily household chores that were done by servants in her own home, and finds herself, painfully, cut off from her own culture and separate from the Americans. At 16, she decides to go with the missionaries when they return to San Francisco, where she meets and marries another Chinese immigrant who starts his own restaurant. The metaphor of things bound and unbound is a ribbon winding through this vivid narrative; the story moves swiftly, while Ailin is a brave and engaging heroine whose difficult choices reflect her time and her gender. (Fiction. 9-14)
Pub Date: May 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-385-32666-1
Page Count: 154
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 1999
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by Cassandra Clare ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 31, 2010
A century before the events of Clare’s Mortal Instruments trilogy, another everyday heroine gets entangled with demon-slaying Shadowhunters. Sixteen-year-old orphaned Tessa comes to London to join her brother but is imprisoned by the grotesque Dark Sisters. The sisters train the unwilling Tessa in previously unknown shapeshifter abilities, preparing her to be a pawn in some diabolical plan. A timely rescue brings Tessa to the Institute, where a group of misfit Shadowhunters struggles to fight evil. Though details differ, the general flavor of Tessa’s new family will be enjoyably familiar to the earlier trilogy’s fans; the most important is Tessa’s rescuer Will, the gorgeous, sharp-tongued teenager with a mysterious past and a smile like “Lucifer might have smiled, moments before he fell from Heaven.” The lush, melodramatic urban fantasy setting of the Shadowhunter world morphs seamlessly into a steampunk Victorian past, and this new series provides the setup for what will surely be a climactic battle against hordes of demonically powered brass clockworks. The tale drags in places, but this crowdpleaser’s tension-filled conclusion ratchets toward a new set of mysteries. (Steampunk. 13-15)
Pub Date: Aug. 31, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-4169-7586-1
Page Count: 496
Publisher: McElderry
Review Posted Online: July 1, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2010
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by Cassandra Clare ; illustrated by Alexandra Curte
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by Cassandra Clare ; illustrated by Kathleen Jennings
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