A moving depiction of courage and immigrant pride amid the horrors of war.
In a new edition of this novel for roughly ages 10 and up, a Chinese American boy enlists in the Union Army to fight against slavery but must also battle prejudice.
Young Thomas Beck is not really sure how old he was when his uncle saved his life by hiding him on an American merchant ship about to sail away from Canton harbor in China. The kindly captain, Joseph Beck, took the young stowaway home to Connecticut, where he and his wife named him Thomas and raised him as their own alongside his brother, Robert. Ten years later, Thomas is a normal, rough-and-tumble, freedom-loving American boy, with only his Asian facial features and the hairstyle known as a “braided queue” to signal his Chinese heritage. Thomas and his brother long to fight in the Civil War, though Robert scoffs, “There ain’t no such thing as a Chinese Yankee.” Ignoring their mother’s warning that their place is at home with her, both boys run away to enlist in the 14th Regiment Connecticut Volunteer Infantry. Thomas soon finds harsh truth in Robert’s warning that, “Folks don’t know what being Chinese means,” as he faces rejection and hostility from new comrades, including, heartbreakingly, his own brother. Unable to hide his difference, Tom embraces his Chinese identity with stubborn courage and an American belief in freedom and fairness as he is plunged into one bloody battle after another. Haas’ narrative brings the contradictions of that devastating conflict to life as the brothers encounter a world of complex moralities. Saved from a life of enslavement as a coolie in China, Tom feels a deep connection to the fight against slavery, but many of his fellow soldiers are as hostile to freed Blacks as their Southern counterparts. Alongside vivid descriptions of the chaos and intensity of 19th-century warfare, this stirring book explores the evolving class and racial attitudes of the time. An author’s note gives a brief biography of Joseph Pierce, the “real-life Chinese Yankee” on whom the book is based.
A moving depiction of courage and immigrant pride amid the horrors of war.Pub Date: April 13, 2022
ISBN: 979-8-98594-100-5
Page Count: 228
Publisher: Farmer's Lane Press
Review Posted Online: July 5, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Energetic but at times heavy-handed, this dystopian tale seems destined for a screen adaptation.
Trial and punishment are carried out via a social media process called the Hive in this futuristic thriller created by a team that includes an actress, a film producer, and two writers.
The daughter of a famous hacker, high school senior Cassie is still grieving her dad’s recent death. Her mother, a classics professor named Rachel, is struggling both to make ends meet and with the ongoing presence of National Security Agency agents who keep nosing around her late husband’s doings. Alternating between Cassie’s and her mother’s third-person narration, the difficult relationship between the pair provides a believable emotional backbone for this high-concept, fast-paced, sometimes overly detailed cautionary tale of the morally fraught territory that results when technology and mob mentality mix. After Cassie makes a tasteless joke online about the new grandchild of the president (a figure who is so obviously Trump that the pretense of his name being fictionalized seems pointless), she must flee the ensuing violent wrath of the Hive, discovering its secrets along the way. Readers may be frustrated by the intelligent and sarcastic Cassie’s apparent inability to identify people who are clearly likely to betray her. Cassie is biracial—her mother is white, and her dad was black—and the secondary characters are realistically diverse.
Energetic but at times heavy-handed, this dystopian tale seems destined for a screen adaptation. (Science fiction. 14-18)Pub Date: Sept. 3, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5253-0060-8
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Kids Can
Review Posted Online: June 9, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2019
Outrageous and uproariously funny.
A girl plots a takedown of the toxic Speech and Debate team that rules her school.
When Sydney starts at Eaganville School for the Arts, she immediately runs afoul of the powerful Speech and Debate kids due to her mouthy nature. She’s adopted by other misfits with Speech grudges—athletic Lakshmi; former Speech star Elijah; and gay theater aficionado Thomas. Sydney decides to avenge her friends by joining Speech and Debate and destroying it from the inside. To do this, she must become good enough to stay on the varsity team all the way to Nationals. The dissent Sydney and friends sow within the team involves inflaming rivalries, toying with hormones, and various other dirty tricks—luckily, the varsity team members are so odious that their punishments remain hilarious. The true villain is the win-at-all-costs abusive coach. Sydney also copes with her family’s new normal—incarcerated father, dramatically reduced socio-economic status, and her mother’s boyfriend, a meathead lunk played for laughs (until he blossoms into a surprisingly supportive and caring character). Humor infuses everything—Sydney’s narration, gleeful profanity, irreverence, and elaborate scheme sequences. The members of the highly diverse cast have distinctive voices and personalities (Sydney and Elijah are white, Lakshmi is Indian, and Thomas is black). The infiltrate-and-destroy storyline combined with immersion in a subculture that is taken with deadly hilarious seriousness make this read like the demented love child of Mean Girls and Pitch Perfect.
Outrageous and uproariously funny. (Fiction. 14-adult)Pub Date: May 5, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-368-01007-8
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Disney-Hyperion/LBYR
Review Posted Online: Feb. 4, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
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