Bible smuggling in the days of Henry VIII is the topic of this reticent though admirably researched demi-adventure. Tom Barton, who is given reason to expect that he is the rightful owner of his Uncle Jack's ship The Black Pearl, is drawn into a plan to smuggle William Tyndale's English translation of the New Testament. After Uncle Jack is arrested and thrown into Clink where he dies of the Black Plague (the enigma of his personality still unresolved), Tom finds himself forced into accepting a business partnership with ratlike Herbert Belsey and fanatical Henry Phillips, two of Tyndale's most determined enemies. Most of the characters (though not the Bartons) are historical; however the appearance of Juan de Palos, Christopher Columbus' pilot, on the Black Pearl's roster stretches plausibility a bit far. And the period background is full-bodied—right down to the pubs, populated appropriately by "gixies, fustylegs and drunken sailors." Certainly O'Dell writes well enough to integrate the non-violent flight and martyrdom of the saintly Tyndale with the original mood of raffish action/entertainment. Yet readers drawn by the adventure might balk at the more reflective turn of events after Tom fails to save his friend Tyndale, his involvement with Belsey peters out, and he eventually forgives the much chastened Phillips. Worthwhile, though the parts are more interesting than the whole.
Pub Date: Oct. 8, 1975
ISBN: 0890843686
Page Count: -
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: Oct. 18, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1975
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A sparse, beautifully drawn story about a teen discovering her heritage.
In this YA graphic novel, an alienated Métis girl learns about her people’s Canadian history.
Métis teenager Echo Desjardins finds herself living in a home away from her mother, attending a new school, and feeling completely lonely as a result. She daydreams in class and wanders the halls listening to a playlist of her mother’s old CDs. At home, she shuts herself up in her room. But when her history teacher begins to lecture about the Pemmican Wars of early 1800s Saskatchewan, Echo finds herself swept back to that time. She sees the Métis people following the bison with their mobile hunting camp, turning the animals’ meat into pemmican, which they sell to the Northwest Company in order to buy supplies for the winter. Echo meets a young girl named Marie, who introduces Echo to the rhythms of Métis life. She finally understands what her Métis heritage actually means. But the joys are short-lived, as conflicts between the Métis and their rivals in the Hudson Bay Company come to a bloody head. The tragic history of her people will help explain the difficulties of the Métis in Echo’s own time, including those of her mother and the teen herself. Accompanied by dazzling art by Henderson (A Blanket of Butterflies, 2017, etc.) and colorist Yaciuk (Fire Starters, 2016, etc.), this tale is a brilliant bit of time travel. Readers are swept back to 19th-century Saskatchewan as fully as Echo herself. Vermette’s (The Break, 2017, etc.) dialogue is sparse, offering a mostly visual, deeply contemplative juxtaposition of the present and the past. Echo’s eventual encounter with her mother (whose fate has been kept from readers up to that point) offers a powerful moment of connection that is both unexpected and affecting. “Are you…proud to be Métis?” Echo asks her, forcing her mother to admit, sheepishly: “I don’t really know much about it.” With this series opener, the author provides a bit more insight into what that means.
A sparse, beautifully drawn story about a teen discovering her heritage.Pub Date: March 15, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-55379-678-7
Page Count: 48
Publisher: HighWater Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 28, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Sepetys’ flowing prose gently carries readers through the crushing tragedy of this tale that needs telling.
This bitterly sad, fluidly written historical novel tackles a topic woefully underdiscussed in English-language children’s fiction: Joseph Stalin’s reign of terror.
On June 14th, 1941, Soviet officers arrest 15-year-old Lina, her younger brother and her mother and deport them from Lithuania to Siberia. Their crammed-full boxcar is labeled, ludicrously, “Thieves and Prostitutes.” They work at a frigid gulag for eight months—hungry, filthy and brutalized by Soviet officers—before being taken to the Siberian Arctic and left without shelter. Lina doesn’t know the breadth of Stalin’s mass deportations of Baltic citizens, but she hears scraps of discussion about politics and World War II. Cold, starvation, exhaustion and disease (scurvy, dysentery, typhus) claim countless victims. Lina sketches urgently, passing her drawings along to other deportees, hoping they’ll reach Papa in a Soviet prison. Brief flashbacks, seamlessly interwoven, illuminate Lina’s sweet old life in Kaunas like flashes of light, eventually helping to reveal why the repressive, deadly regime targeted this family.
Sepetys’ flowing prose gently carries readers through the crushing tragedy of this tale that needs telling. (maps, timeline, author’s note) (Historical fiction. 12-adult)Pub Date: March 22, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-399-25412-3
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Philomel
Review Posted Online: Jan. 8, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2011
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