Language-arts teachers who teach writing in workshop format, and the eighth-grade students who write daily in those workshops, will recognize themselves in this reality-based comedy set in a Manhattan middle school. Ms. Vallis has something special planned for her eighth-graders: Her cousin is married to rock star Nick Thompson and he’s agreed to visit their writing workshop. Nick’s lesson? The art of writing is like a bowl of fruit; writing is “all about style.” Nick tells the kids, “It ain’t the story, it’s how you tell it that counts.” Then he and the kids brainstorm a list of seven items that must be included in their stories; the stories can be told in any form the writer chooses. The remaining two-thirds consists of the “student-generated” work. Discerning readers may appreciate the Rashomon-like effect of reading many versions of the same story but might find the premise shallow and cartoonish. Certainly, educators and other readers will find this a light, entertaining read but may object to the writing philosophy. Is writing really only about style? Perhaps this fruit bowl has too much sugar and not enough fiber—moral or otherwise. (Fiction. 10-12)
Pub Date: Jan. 24, 2006
ISBN: 0-385-73289-9
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2005
Curtis debuts with a ten-year-old's lively account of his teenaged brother's ups and downs. Ken tries to make brother Byron out to be a real juvenile delinquent, but he comes across as more of a comic figure: getting stuck to the car when he kisses his image in a frozen side mirror, terrorized by his mother when she catches him playing with matches in the bathroom, earning a shaved head by coming home with a conk. In between, he defends Ken from a bully and buries a bird he kills by accident. Nonetheless, his parents decide that only a long stay with tough Grandma Sands will turn him around, so they all motor from Michigan to Alabama, arriving in time to witness the infamous September bombing of a Sunday school. Ken is funny and intelligent, but he gives readers a clearer sense of Byron's character than his own and seems strangely unaffected by his isolation and harassment (for his odd look—he has a lazy eye—and high reading level) at school. Curtis tries to shoehorn in more characters and subplots than the story will comfortably bear—as do many first novelists—but he creates a well-knit family and a narrator with a distinct, believable voice. (Fiction. 10-12)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-385-32175-9
Page Count: 210
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1995
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Despite Amelia E. Rye’s confession that, “I’m a very good liar. I curse, too,” she comes clean to readers in her “personal memoir,” in which she relates the difficulties of living with her bad-tempered mother, who was pushing 50 when Amelia was born. Mrs. Rye is too worn-out to muster any motherly feelings for her daughter. She forces Amelia to wear hand-me-downs that are decades out of fashion, causing the friendless girl to become the brunt of cruel pranks. Everything changes the day Fancy walks into Amelia’s fourth-grade class. New to the upstate New York town, the friendly African-American girl offers friendship and acceptance, the very things Amelia has been hankering for. The story moves quickly, and in its four-year span Amelia learns the truth about her dysfunctional family’s unhappy past. The 1960s-era setting is mostly irrelevant to the plot, the racial tension is unconvincing and Amelia’s observations are too often wise beyond her years. What propels this otherwise undistinguished coming-of-age story forward is the strong bond of friendship that deepens over time between Amelia and Fancy. (Historical fiction. 10-12)
Pub Date: May 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-374-36131-0
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: June 23, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2010
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