Ambitious but only fitfully entertaining or informative.
Ask not what your prep school can do for you, ask what you can do for your prep school.
Journalist and nonfiction writer Badler states that this novel, focusing on John F. Kennedy’s time at the elite Choate School, is mostly based on actual history. Unfortunately, this first-person fictionalized portrait of a mutinous teenage underachiever fizzles. Episodes include gathering a group of fellow muckers to defiantly hold secret meetings before compulsory chapel and wear unsanctioned club pins, an explicit visit to a Harlem bordello, a closeted roommate’s offer of a hand job, and no less than four long dialogues with a Columbia psychologist. Interactions with the large Kennedy clan, particularly eldest brother and golden boy Joe Jr., play a large role. Both Lead Belly and Gertrude Stein parade past, the former having to pass his hat to get paid, the latter to make her famous comment about her hometown and encourage young Jack to write a book about brave politicians. In the end, the adolescent fuming and rebellion feel like a device for showing a future president developing leadership skills, exhibiting strength of character in dealing with his chronically poor health, and expressing strong feelings about the injustice of racial and religious prejudice. Readers can get the same from better conventional biographies without having to pick the invented bits out from the historical ones.
Ambitious but only fitfully entertaining or informative. (author’s note, character bios, timeline, discussion questions, further reading) (Historical fiction. 15-18)Pub Date: May 29, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-61088-566-9
Page Count: 324
Publisher: Bancroft Press
Review Posted Online: March 28, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2022
A visually stimulating and emotionally gripping graphic novel about the Métis people.
A sequel offers a teenager’s further adventures through Métis history.
In Vermette’s (Pemmican Wars, 2018, etc.) graphic novel, Métis teen Echo Desjardins is starting to fit in a little better at Winnipeg Middle School, making friends and getting involved in the Indigenous Students Leadership group. But she still spends most of her time listening to music on her cellphone and getting swept up in the lectures that her teacher gives on the history of the Métis people. This volume covers the 1869 Red River Rebellion—or Red River Resistance, as Echo’s back-in-time friend Benjamin calls it, because “there will be no violence.” After the Hudson Bay Company sells the land on which the Métis people live to the government of Canada, Métis leaders Louis Riel and Ambroise Lépine attempt to halt the inevitable flood of settlers. They establish a provisional Métis government for the Northwest Province. Though the Métis take great pains to negotiate peacefully with the incoming Canadian government, troublemakers both inside and outside of their territory—including the anti–Roman Catholic, anti-French, anti-Indigenous Orangemen—may make the violence that Benjamin promised would never occur impossible to stop. As Echo witnesses one of the great what-ifs of North American history fall apart, the tragedy is reflected in the pain she feels in her personal life back in the 21st century. As in the previous volume, the story is accompanied by beautiful, full-color artwork by the team of Henderson and Yaciuk (Pemmican Wars, 2018, etc.). This book has less of Echo’s own life in it than the first novel, and the historical portions, with their many bearded 19th-century leaders, feel perhaps more didactic and less dramatic than the author’s account of the Pemmican Wars. Even so, this underexplored portion of North American history should prove intriguing and affecting for readers, particularly those living in the United States, where the struggles of the Métis people are largely unknown. By contrasting these historical events side by side with Echo’s story, this installment does a wonderful job showing how the ripples of past policies have shaped the current day and how political decisions always have a personal cost.
A visually stimulating and emotionally gripping graphic novel about the Métis people.Pub Date: March 1, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-55379-747-0
Page Count: 48
Publisher: HighWater Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 8, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An entertaining duology closer.
Eighteen-year-old Nathalie Baudin must once again use her unusual powers to unmask a killer in Zdrok’s follow-up to 2019’s Spectacle.
It’s 1889, two years since Nathalie, a morgue reporter for Le Petit Journal, learned that she could envision the last moments of a murder victim’s life by touching either the viewing pane in front of the body or the body itself. These powers resulted from blood transfusions by a controversial doctor, and the “gifts” conferred are different for each person, or Insightful. Nathalie’s gift is gruesome, but she enjoys working for police liaison Christophe as an Insightful adviser to help solve murder cases. Outside of work, Nathalie loves exploring the world showcases of the Exposition Universelle with her beau, Jules, also an Insightful, and her best friend, Simone, and her young man, Louis. When they stumble upon a severed head on a pedestal, they soon realize it’s only the beginning for a killer with a flair for the dramatic. The mystery takes a back seat to Nathalie’s personal growth as she struggles with her gift—which has its drawbacks—properly mourns for a friend, and weathers her institutionalized aunt’s decline. All main characters are white, but diversity can be found at the Exposition Universelle. The mystery is thin, but readers will enjoy exploring fin de siècle Paris with Nathalie and her spirited friends while they attempt to suss out a vicious killer.
An entertaining duology closer. (Paranormal historical thriller. 15-18)Pub Date: Feb. 11, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-7653-9971-7
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Tor Teen
Review Posted Online: Nov. 16, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
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