bookshelf

EXTRAORDINARY BIRDS

Name: EXTRAORDINARY BIRDS
Author: Sandy Stark-McGinnis
ISBN: 978-1-5476-0100-4

by Sandy Stark-McGinnis ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 30, 2019

Mostly perceptive and appealingly hopeful.

bookshelf

In her personal mythology she is a bird, but December begins to trust some of the humans around her.

Narrator December Lee Morgan is almost 12, solitary and a survivor, when she arrives at her latest foster home. The scars on her back—the result of an injury inflicted years ago by her mother, never fully detailed—become the place where December believes her wings will emerge when they are ready. Her new foster parent is a single woman, Eleanor, who builds houses and volunteers at a wildlife rehabilitation center. December carries two books with her everywhere: The Complete Guide to Birds, Volume One, and Bird Girl: An Extraordinary Tale. The first she has nearly memorized, and the second is her biography, a reminder to herself that she is really a bird and that her wings will open when she finds and leaps from the perfect flight tree. But Eleanor offers December something new: a respectful regard, perhaps from her understanding of wild animals. And December’s new schoolmate Cheryllyn is supportive and endlessly kind though herself bullied by girls who refuse to use her chosen name and refer to her by her former pronouns. December and Eleanor present white, and Cheryllyn, has skin “the color of paperbark maple.” Bird imagery and facts provide a subtle and graceful constant, and Stark-McGinnis’ prose is carefully crafted, direct, and convincing.

Mostly perceptive and appealingly hopeful. (Fiction. 9-13)

Pub Date: April 30, 2019

ISBN: 978-1-5476-0100-4

Page Count: 224

Publisher: Bloomsbury

Review Posted Online: Feb. 5, 2019

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2019

Categories:

CHILDREN'S ANIMALS | CHILDREN'S SOCIAL THEMES

bookshelf

CLUES TO THE UNIVERSE

by Christina Li ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 12, 2021

Charming, poignant, and thoughtfully woven.

bookshelf

An aspiring scientist and a budding artist become friends and help each other with dream projects.

Unfolding in mid-1980s Sacramento, California, this story stars 12-year-olds Rosalind and Benjamin as first-person narrators in alternating chapters. Ro’s father, a fellow space buff, was killed by a drunk driver; the rocket they were working on together lies unfinished in her closet. As for Benji, not only has his best friend, Amir, moved away, but the comic book holding the clue for locating his dad is also missing. Along with their profound personal losses, the protagonists share a fixation with the universe’s intriguing potential: Ro decides to complete the rocket and hopes to launch mementos of her father into outer space while Benji’s conviction that aliens and UFOs are real compels his imagination and creativity as an artist. An accident in science class triggers a chain of events forcing Benji and Ro, who is new to the school, to interact and unintentionally learn each other’s secrets. They resolve to find Benji’s dad—a famous comic-book artist—and partner to finish Ro’s rocket for the science fair. Together, they overcome technical, scheduling, and geographical challenges. Readers will be drawn in by amusing and fantastical elements in the comic book theme, high emotional stakes that arouse sympathy, and well-drawn character development as the protagonists navigate life lessons around grief, patience, self-advocacy, and standing up for others. Ro is biracial (Chinese/White); Benji is White.

Charming, poignant, and thoughtfully woven. (Fiction. 9-12)

Pub Date: Jan. 12, 2021

ISBN: 978-0-06-300888-5

Page Count: 304

Publisher: Quill Tree Books/HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: Oct. 26, 2020

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2020

Categories:

CHILDREN'S FAMILY | CHILDREN'S SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY | CHILDREN'S SOCIAL THEMES

bookshelf

NUMBER THE STARS

by Lois Lowry ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 1, 1989

A deftly told story that dramatizes how Danes appointed themselves bodyguards—not only for their king, who was in the habit...

bookshelf

The author of the Anastasia books as well as more serious fiction (Rabble Starkey, 1987) offers her first historical fiction—a story about the escape of the Jews from Denmark in 1943.

Five years younger than Lisa in Carol Matas' Lisa's War (1989), Annemarie Johansen has, at 10, known three years of Nazi occupation. Though ever cautious and fearful of the ubiquitous soldiers, she is largely unaware of the extent of the danger around her; the Resistance kept even its participants safer by telling them as little as possible, and Annemarie has never been told that her older sister Lise died in its service. When the Germans plan to round up the Jews, the Johansens take in Annemarie's friend, Ellen Rosen, and pretend she is their daughter; later, they travel to Uncle Hendrik's house on the coast, where the Rosens and other Jews are transported by fishing boat to Sweden. Apart from Lise's offstage death, there is little violence here; like Annemarie, the reader is protected from the full implications of events—but will be caught up in the suspense and menace of several encounters with soldiers and in Annemarie's courageous run as courier on the night of the escape. The book concludes with the Jews' return, after the war, to homes well kept for them by their neighbors.

A deftly told story that dramatizes how Danes appointed themselves bodyguards—not only for their king, who was in the habit of riding alone in Copenhagen, but for their Jews. (Historical fiction. 9-12)