More conceptual than distinct, but accessible and potentially useful.
Cyberbullying and a suicide attempt, told from four first-person perspectives.
The dramatic opening finds 15-year-old Lara, “numb with hurt and panic,” talking online with a boy named Christian, her first romance, though she knows him only online. He’s calling her awful, terrible, a loser he’d never take to a dance. “The world would be a better place without you in it,” he types and promptly blocks her. Next, Lara’s sister, Sydney, an eighth-grader, pounds on a locked door behind which Lara has overdosed. As emergency workers carry Lara out on a stretcher, next-door neighbor Bree (also 15) snaps a pic and posts it to Facebook, reveling in the many “likes” it draws. The timeline rewinds two months; Lara, Syd, Bree and Bree’s eighth-grade brother, Liam, alternate narrating. The two families used to be close, and Bree and Lara even used to be good friends. The prose is smooth, though the piece overall is more about ideas—cyberbullying and suicide—than any unique characterization of these white, suburban teens. The parents range from self-centered to actively cruel—Bree’s mother helps Bree fool and taunt Lara—and even Syd repeatedly considers her sister’s pain to be “drama.” The four-narrator structure isn’t entirely emotionally illuminating: Bree never quite makes sense as a character even in her own chapters.
More conceptual than distinct, but accessible and potentially useful. (author’s note) (Fiction. 12-16)Pub Date: March 31, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-545-65126-4
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Dec. 5, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2014
A funny and spirited romp.
Teen filmmakers try to make the titular cinematic masterpiece.
Justin and his pals Bobby and Gabe have been making movies for a while now, but none has gained much traction. Their films have been poorly received on YouTube, and few of their fellow students show much interest in their moviemaking exploits. After their vampire movie falls apart, the trio resolves to go big or go home, and going big means making the greatest zombie movie ever. With a $5,000 loan from Justin's grandmother and the most popular girl in school as its star, Justin's film is off to a good start. But it doesn't take long for Murphy's law to take effect—in increasingly silly and exasperating fashion. Strand's penchant for tongue-in-cheek humor and witty repartee is on full display here. Justin, Bobby, and Gabe have numerous exchanges that will have readers chuckling, snickering, and laughing out loud. Unfortunately these laughs don't cover up the structural issues at hand. A few avenues turn into dead ends, making the thrust of the novel a bit muddled. Is this a story about the complications that come with following dreams? Is it a story about three friends growing older and apart with age? The novel doesn't seem to know, and while that doesn't ruin the fun, it does hold it back from true greatness. With ethnicity a nonissue, characters are white by default.
A funny and spirited romp. (Fiction. 12-16)Pub Date: March 1, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4926-2814-9
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Sourcebooks Fire
Review Posted Online: Dec. 7, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Unabashedly didactic, but moving nonetheless.
A slacker learns life lessons from a slam-poet classmate in an inspiring if overly optimistic school story.
Grunge-rock devotee Sam has been trying to avoid the attention of teachers and other students ever since his mom left town two years earlier. Then the equally quiet Luis Cárdenas arrives in Sam’s English class, and meddlesome Ms. Cassidy seats the two of them together. Rumors fly about Luis: His brother is an infamous gangster, and there is a mean-looking scar on Luis’ neck. Sam doesn’t see Luis’ true colors until Ms. Cassidy announces that the class will have a poetry slam. Luis not only throws himself into creating a poem, he inspires Sam to do the same. The boys’ sudden, unmitigated enthusiasm for a school project may be hard to swallow, but there is something infectiously hopeful in Luis’ devotion to poetry, as well as in the inspiration Sam takes from old footage of Kurt Cobain. When Luis disappears after a gang fight, Sam, once a loner, teams up with classmates, teachers, neighbors and old friends to find out what has happened. Short, punchy sentences, paragraphs and chapters give the novel’s prose a sense of motion, and Luis’ poems, interspersed with the narrative, give readers added insight into Luis’ character.
Unabashedly didactic, but moving nonetheless. (Fiction. 12-16)Pub Date: Aug. 27, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-8050-9514-2
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Christy Ottaviano/Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: May 28, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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