An only average depiction of a compelling and important topic.
After her father, a Japanese immigrant, is arrested on trumped-up charges of espionage at the outset of World War II, 12-year-old Tomi and the rest of her family, like many Japanese-Americans, are incarcerated in an internment camp for the remainder of the war.
The family is given just two weeks to prepare for their imprisonment. They sell most of their possessions, and after several months in temporary quarters in a stall at a California racetrack, they are transferred to an unfinished camp, Tallgrass, in Colorado. Dallas, who portrayed the same fictional internment camp in her related adult novel, Tallgrass (2007), now explores camp life from an internee’s point of view. An optimistic girl, Tomi navigates the myriad difficulties of camp life and unfair imprisonment with a generally positive attitude until her embittered father is allowed to rejoin the family early in 1944. His seething anger unseats her efforts to make the best of things and cope with the prejudice of local residents. Eventually, a kind teacher inspires Tomi to enter a statewide essay contest that she wins, predictably relieving her father’s bitterness. Nearly unvarying subject/predicate sentence structure, uninspired dialogue and periodic infodumps—most of which feels as if written for a very young audience—serve to diminish the attractiveness of the presentation.
An only average depiction of a compelling and important topic. (Historical fiction. 9-12)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-58536-906-5
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Sleeping Bear Press
Review Posted Online: June 17, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2014
This stands out for its unusual setting and smooth integration of friendship and family concerns. (Fiction. 10-14)
Sucked into "business" with a crooked classmate, bowling fanatic Lamar Washington makes good money faking his skills, but when a disruptive prank reveals his new friend Billy’s duplicity, he realizes how wrong it was to aim to be “the smoothest baddest dude” in Coffin, Ind.
This refreshing first novel is told in the first person with plenty of snappy dialogue by a smart African-American middle-schooler whose asthma has kept him out of the usual sports and whose older brother, a basketball star, consistently taunts him. Lamar’s new friendship threatens both a longstanding one and a promising new relationship with a girl. Tension mounts as Lamar is drawn further into an unsavory gambling world, realizing that his cheating is wrong but thrilled to have the cash to buy a Bubba Sanders bowling ball. A final, seriously physical fight with his brother leads to climactic arrests. The drab rigidity of Camp Turnaround, where Billy is incarcerated, contrasts with the excitement of the bowling alley Lamar loves. His grounding and community service seem appropriate. His understanding of the consequences of his prank fire alarm, both for his brother and for his basketball-mad small town, comes slowly and realistically, and the solution of his family issues is satisfying.
This stands out for its unusual setting and smooth integration of friendship and family concerns. (Fiction. 10-14)Pub Date: Feb. 22, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-06-199272-8
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Balzer + Bray/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Jan. 10, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2011
A coming-of-age story as tender and sweet as a summer evening breeze
Summer adventures begin when Bina accidentally locks herself out of her house in Larson’s newest middle-grade graphic novel.
The summer before eighth grade is a season of self-discovery for many 13-year-olds, including Bina, when her best friend heads off to soccer camp and leaves her alone to navigate a SoCal summer. Without athletic Austin around to steer the ship, Bina must pursue her own passions, such as discovering new bands and rocking out on her electric guitar. Unexpected friendships bloom, and new members are welcomed into her family. Though her sphere grows over the summer, friendship with Austin is strained when he returns, and Bina must learn to embrace the proverb to make new friends but keep the old. As her mother wisely observes, “you’re more you every day,” and by the end of summer Bina is more comfortable in her own skin and ready to rock eighth grade. Larson’s panels are superb at revealing emotional conflict, subtext, and humor within the deceptively simple third-person limited plot, allowing characters to grow and develop emotionally over only a few spreads. She also does a laudable job of depicting a diverse community for Bina to call home. Though Bina’s ethnicity is never overtly identified, her racial ambiguity lends greater universality to her story. (In the two-toned apricot, black, and white panels, Bina and her mother have the same black hair and gold skin, while her dad is white, as is Austin.)
A coming-of-age story as tender and sweet as a summer evening breeze . (Graphic fiction. 10-14)Pub Date: May 1, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-374-30485-0
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: March 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2018
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