A serviceable debut featuring a main character who grows in clearly composed stages.
A timid seventh grader finds the mettle to shake some bad companions in this patchy esteem-builder from Flake.
Tired of being harassed in the halls for her dark skin and homemade clothes, Maleeka latches on to tough, mouthy classmate Charlese for protection, although the cost is high: doing Charlese's homework and enduring her open contempt. Enter Miss Saunders, a large, expensively dressed advertising executive on sabbatical for a year to teach in an inner-city school; Maleeka puts up a hostile front, but slowly, angrily, responds to the woman's "interference," creating a journal that is part diary, part a fictional slave's narrative that later wins a writing contest. As Maleeka inches toward independence, Charlese counterattacks, bullying her into incriminating acts that climaxes with a fire in Miss Saunders's classroom. The violence is contrived, the characters sketchy and predictable, but the relationship that develops between Maleeka and Miss Saunders isn't all one-way. A serviceable debut featuring a main character who grows in clearly composed stages. (Fiction. 11-13)Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-7868-0444-0
Page Count: 171
Publisher: Disney-Jump at the Sun
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1998
A wry, loosely knit story of a British teenager who experiments with running away. Sent to boarding school in an effort to boost his grades, Nicky learns that his parents are pulling apart; when he comes home hoping to mend matters, he sees his dad wining and dining a secretary. Disgusted almost as much by the clichÇ as by the situation, Nicky moves into an abandoned house with a colony of squatters—felons all, except for Carla, the leader's attractive black moll; becomes a car thief, falls in with a quirky street-person, and, finally, weary and ragged, calls his distraught parents to bring him home. There's little violence here, but there's also little tension; meanwhile, the characters are standard issue: one school bully, one adolescent older sister, one burglar, one drug dealer, one prostitute (the last two work entirely offstage). Nicky is more aware of the squalor and discomfort he encounters than the perils of street life, and all he has to show for his experience is an invitation from Carla to look her up in a few years. The danger and cast of runaways in Nelson's The Beggar's Ride (1992) are far more vividly drawn. (Fiction. 11- 13)
Pub Date: April 30, 1993
ISBN: 0-02-710685-3
Page Count: 140
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
Sixteen stories with similar themes, gathered from various Native American traditions. Boys—sometimes with names like "Bad Young Man" or "Boy Who Grew Up Wild"—pass into manhood after they undertake vision quests, heroically slay monsters, or are transformed into animals. Several have magic helpers or receive good advice from elders; strength is displayed by sparing life as well as taking it. In the Navajo "How the Hero Twins Found Their Father," Monster Slayer deliberately allows Hunger, Cold, Poverty and Old Age to go free; the Muskogee Blue Fox makes peace with Cherokee attackers rather than slaughtering them. Though the flavor of Bruchac's spare, formal language is more literary than oral, he has drawn few (if any) of these stories from printed sources; thus, he offers readers new insight into a range of Native American cultures—and into history, too, since he includes a description of Crazy Horse's vision quest, and a subarctic hunter's reminiscence of his first whale hunt. The tales in each regional section are prefigured by Jacob's handsome, white-on-black medallions. Brief reading list; foreword and afterword on the value of oral and cultural transmission. (Folklore. 11-13)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1993
ISBN: 1555916937
Page Count: 130
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1993
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