A vividly written historical novel by a promising new voice.
Two sisters must learn to take care of each other in Lindstedt’s debut novel for children.
In 1960s rural Texas, African American siblings Sandy Forte and her sister, Glory, navigate a world of segregation, abandonment, and poverty in this collection of loosely connected stories and parables. Readers experience Sandy’s first memory at age 3 at her grandmother’s small cottage in Hooks, Texas, on the day their mother departs for Chicago. The same day, Sandy is injured in a traumatic lawn-mowing accident, and her sister stops speaking. Sandy is tended and nurtured by her grandmother, who reads her Bible verses each night and sews dolls from a rag pile. Like the tales Grandma spins, Sandy’s stories seem to dance along the line between fiction and truth. For example, when she swallows a firefly on a dare, the insect becomes a metaphor for an inner light—an intuition that Grandma helped activate. A few years later, Sandy and Glory take an epic train ride to Chicago, where bullies, and their mother, Janetta Mae, await them. Their busy, distracted mom juggles a job, a pregnancy, and her boyfriend’s three children. Sandy, left to her own devices, must clear life’s hurdles on her own. She gets into a vicious fight with a schoolteacher, plots to get even with a bully, and finds a way to take a school field trip thanks to a lucky break. Despite the odds, Sandy always finds a way to come out on top. Overall, the novel’s plot feels thin, and several characters are introduced only to be abandoned. However, Lindstedt’s vibrant, poetic prose overcomes these flaws. Her descriptions of the Texas setting are particularly winning: “The sky was black as blood pudding, but our front yard was filled with swarming lights.” The text is filled with other, similarly sensory-heightening sentences: “Crickets were having some kind of a party, dancing and singing in the grass outside my window.” Each chapter begins with a poem that reads like an entry from Sandy’s personal diary, and folksy, black-and-white illustrations by Groat and Hall are also included.
A vividly written historical novel by a promising new voice.Pub Date: Aug. 29, 2020
ISBN: 979-8-67-913332-7
Page Count: 156
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Dec. 8, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Readers can still rely on this series to bring laughs.
The Heffley family’s house undergoes a disastrous attempt at home improvement.
When Great Aunt Reba dies, she leaves some money to the family. Greg’s mom calls a family meeting to determine what to do with their share, proposing home improvements and then overruling the family’s cartoonish wish lists and instead pushing for an addition to the kitchen. Before bringing in the construction crew, the Heffleys attempt to do minor maintenance and repairs themselves—during which Greg fails at the work in various slapstick scenes. Once the professionals are brought in, the problems keep getting worse: angry neighbors, terrifying problems in walls, and—most serious—civil permitting issues that put the kibosh on what work’s been done. Left with only enough inheritance to patch and repair the exterior of the house—and with the school’s dismal standardized test scores as a final straw—Greg’s mom steers the family toward moving, opening up house-hunting and house-selling storylines (and devastating loyal Rowley, who doesn’t want to lose his best friend). While Greg’s positive about the move, he’s not completely uncaring about Rowley’s action. (And of course, Greg himself is not as unaffected as he wishes.) The gags include effectively placed callbacks to seemingly incidental events (the “stress lizard” brought in on testing day is particularly funny) and a lampoon of after-school-special–style problem books. Just when it seems that the Heffleys really will move, a new sequence of chaotic trouble and property destruction heralds a return to the status quo. Whew.
Readers can still rely on this series to bring laughs. (Graphic/fiction hybrid. 8-12)Pub Date: Nov. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4197-3903-3
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Amulet/Abrams
Review Posted Online: Nov. 18, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
An emotional, much-needed historical graphic novel.
Sandy and his family, Japanese Canadians, experience hatred and incarceration during World War II.
Sandy Saito loves baseball, and the Vancouver Asahi ballplayers are his heroes. But when they lose in the 1941 semifinals, Sandy’s dad calls it a bad omen. Sure enough, in December 1941, Japan bombs Pearl Harbor in the U.S. The Canadian government begins to ban Japanese people from certain areas, moving them to “dormitories” and setting a curfew. Sandy wants to spend time with his father, but as a doctor, his dad is busy, often sneaking out past curfew to work. One night Papa is taken to “where he [is] needed most,” and the family is forced into an internment camp. Life at the camp isn’t easy, and even with some of the Asahi players playing ball there, it just isn’t the same. Trying to understand and find joy again, Sandy struggles with his new reality and relationship with his father. Based on the true experiences of Japanese Canadians and the Vancouver Asahi team, this graphic novel is a glimpse of how their lives were affected by WWII. The end is a bit abrupt, but it’s still an inspiring and sweet look at how baseball helped them through hardship. The illustrations are all in a sepia tone, giving it an antique look and conveying the emotions and struggles. None of the illustrations of their experiences are overly graphic, making it a good introduction to this upsetting topic for middle-grade readers.
An emotional, much-needed historical graphic novel. (afterword, further resources) (Graphic historical fiction. 9-12)Pub Date: Oct. 5, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-5253-0334-0
Page Count: 112
Publisher: Kids Can
Review Posted Online: June 28, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2021
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