A fresh, emotionally complex bildungsroman of young American love that looks long and hard at violence, and at what can...
In Castrovilla’s (Revolutionary Friends, 2013, etc.) YA novel, a teenager finds an existential crisis in a doughnut shop—and a love like no other.
When straight-laced 16-year-old Dorothy meets rough-edged 17-year-old Joey at a Dunkin’ Donuts in her new home of Highland Park, her friend Amy warns her to keep her distance. But she can’t ignore the fact that she and Joey are drawn to each other. She’s a stereotypical “good girl”; her parents, both successful professionals, regularly quiz her on her whereabouts and watch for truancy. Joey, on the other hand, is a quintessential lost soul: a paradoxical, convoluted figure whose violent past has left him with literal scars. He’s also physically intimidating, with a reputation to match, but it’s a façade that masks his sensitive, traumatized interior. Joey’s father, a police officer who beats his family, is another obstacle to his happiness, and as Dorothy does her utmost to save Joey from a life of alcoholism and nihilism, his father stands in the way, a perpetual source of danger. Joey and Dorothy must find their way as they struggle with doubt and fear for their lives. The story is told from Joey’s and Dorothy’s first-person points of view, alternating between snappy prose and jagged, sharp-edged poetry that evokes the terror of violence and the ecstasy of infatuation. The author sugarcoats nothing in this tale of adolescence and anxiety, nor does she paint its characters with a broad brush. Dorothy and Joey’s plight is both an inner and an outer struggle, a reckoning with a cold world, and a psychological drama about the stakes of truth-telling that ends with a gratifying act of mercy.
A fresh, emotionally complex bildungsroman of young American love that looks long and hard at violence, and at what can overcome it.Pub Date: Nov. 6, 2014
ISBN: 978-0991626106
Page Count: -
Publisher: Last Syllable Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
In her first children's book, Parton (the country music star) turns one of her songs into a saccharine tale about a girl who is so poor that her mama has to sew her a patchwork coat when the weather turns cold. (Joseph and his coat of many colors are mentioned but never explained.) Despite the girl's love for her coat, she is teased in school, which she counters by trying to explain to her classmates ``that one is only poor/if they choose to be.'' The logic here is as flawed as the grammar, and Sutton's illustrations, while competent, show a well-dressed, happy rural family who look anything but poor. The text is both clumsy and irrelevent (it ends with ``Through life I've remained happy/and good luck is on my side./I have everything that anyone/could ever want from life.'') An apparently autobiographical song that has a hard time standing on its own as a compelling children's story. (Picture book. All ages)
Pub Date: Sept. 30, 1994
ISBN: 0-06-023413-X
Page Count: 32
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1994
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
IN THE NEWS
Broccoli: No way is James going to eat broccoli. “It’s disgusting,” says James. Well then, James, says his father, let’s consider the alternatives: some wormy dirt, perhaps, some stinky socks, some pre-chewed gum? James reconsiders the broccoli, but—milk? “Blech,” says James. Right, says his father, who needs strong bones? You’ll be great at hide-and-seek, though not so great at baseball and kickball and even tickling the dog’s belly. James takes a mouthful. So it goes through lumpy oatmeal, mushroom lasagna and slimy eggs, with James’ father parrying his son’s every picky thrust. And it is fun, because the father’s retorts are so outlandish: the lasagna-making troll in the basement who will be sent back to the rat circus, there to endure the rodent’s vicious bites; the uneaten oatmeal that will grow and grow and probably devour the dog that the boy won’t be able to tickle any longer since his bones are so rubbery. Schneider’s watercolors catch the mood of gentle ribbing, the looks of bewilderment and surrender and the deadpanned malarkey. It all makes James’ father’s last urging—“I was just going to say that you might like them if you tried them”—wholly fresh and unexpected advice. (Early reader. 5-9)
Pub Date: May 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-547-14956-1
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Clarion Books
Review Posted Online: April 4, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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