Didactic overtones and blatant real-world parallels spoil this reluctant reader series.
Julie balks at working with android Leila as part of her high school’s integration program.
When interacting with Leila reveals that androids might not be as bad as Julie’s parents preached, Julie learns to use her human privilege to stand up for android rights. All books in the AI High series take place at Julie and Leila’s high school, where tensions between humans and androids run high. In Team Player by Jeffrey Pratt (The Prank, 2019), the star quarterback finds himself replaced by the first android addition to the team. Star-Crossed, by Loren Bailey (Becoming Prince Charming, 2018, etc.), is a Romeo and Juliet story about human Alyssa and android Reid. Claire Ainslie’s (The One, 2019) Detained profiles an android who vandalizes the school in retaliation for bullying from human peers. While the latter three titles balance storytelling with pointed lessons about prejudice, Family Ties reads like an oversimplified introduction to racial injustice. Humans represent a white community while negative stereotypes about androids echo real-world racial hostility. Though a couple of the other books feature ethnic diversity among humans and androids, in Family Ties, only android surnames indicate diverse backgrounds (Farid, Goldman, Kim). When Julie intervenes in an anti-android protest, victory is easily won. Ultimately, the topics of prejudice and bigotry deserve to be addressed with more nuance and less attempt at veiling the subject matter.
Didactic overtones and blatant real-world parallels spoil this reluctant reader series. (Speculative fiction. 12-16)Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5415-5691-1
Page Count: 112
Publisher: Darby Creek
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2019
Though it lacks references or suggestions for further reading, Arn's agonizing story is compelling enough that many readers...
A harrowing tale of survival in the Killing Fields.
The childhood of Arn Chorn-Pond has been captured for young readers before, in Michelle Lord and Shino Arihara's picture book, A Song for Cambodia (2008). McCormick, known for issue-oriented realism, offers a fictionalized retelling of Chorn-Pond's youth for older readers. McCormick's version begins when the Khmer Rouge marches into 11-year-old Arn's Cambodian neighborhood and forces everyone into the country. Arn doesn't understand what the Khmer Rouge stands for; he only knows that over the next several years he and the other children shrink away on a handful of rice a day, while the corpses of adults pile ever higher in the mango grove. Arn does what he must to survive—and, wherever possible, to protect a small pocket of children and adults around him. Arn's chilling history pulls no punches, trusting its readers to cope with the reality of children forced to participate in murder, torture, sexual exploitation and genocide. This gut-wrenching tale is marred only by the author's choice to use broken English for both dialogue and description. Chorn-Pond, in real life, has spoken eloquently (and fluently) on the influence he's gained by learning English; this prose diminishes both his struggle and his story.
Though it lacks references or suggestions for further reading, Arn's agonizing story is compelling enough that many readers will seek out the history themselves. (preface, author's note) (Historical fiction. 12-15)Pub Date: May 8, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-06-173093-1
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Balzer + Bray/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 20, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2012
Despite the stale fat-to-curvy pattern, compelling world building with a Southern European, pseudo-Christian feel,...
Adventure drags our heroine all over the map of fantasyland while giving her the opportunity to use her smarts.
Elisa—Princess Lucero-Elisa de Riqueza of Orovalle—has been chosen for Service since the day she was born, when a beam of holy light put a Godstone in her navel. She's a devout reader of holy books and is well-versed in the military strategy text Belleza Guerra, but she has been kept in ignorance of world affairs. With no warning, this fat, self-loathing princess is married off to a distant king and is embroiled in political and spiritual intrigue. War is coming, and perhaps only Elisa's Godstone—and knowledge from the Belleza Guerra—can save them. Elisa uses her untried strategic knowledge to always-good effect. With a character so smart that she doesn't have much to learn, body size is stereotypically substituted for character development. Elisa’s "mountainous" body shrivels away when she spends a month on forced march eating rat, and thus she is a better person. Still, it's wonderfully refreshing to see a heroine using her brain to win a war rather than strapping on a sword and charging into battle.
Despite the stale fat-to-curvy pattern, compelling world building with a Southern European, pseudo-Christian feel, reminiscent of Naomi Kritzer's Fires of the Faithful (2002), keeps this entry fresh. (Fantasy. 12-14)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-06-202648-4
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Greenwillow Books
Review Posted Online: July 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2011
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