A fiery, feminist love story young teens, particularly girls, should just devour.
Love and conventional roles for women collide in this page-ripping tale from 15th-century Venice.
The gifted Printz Honor–winning poet (Your Own, Sylvia, 2007, etc.) turns to Renaissance Italy to probe timeless questions of class, gender roles and family ties. Setting her story on the tiny island of Murano in the late 1400s, Hemphill shines a light on the world of glassmaking as crafted by the well-established Barovier family. The tale’s tension centers around Maria’s promise to honor her dying father’s wish that she marry into Venetian nobility. This responsibility should have fallen to her older sister, Giovanna, whose beauty, charm and upbringing have primed her to become a noblewoman her entire life. At age 15, Maria feels the expanse of her world beginning to shrink as her mother starts preparing her “to be bartered away.” She finds that “learning to be a lady / is like learning / to live within a shell.” Maria’s misery only increases when an alluring glassblower arrives on the scene, making her long even more to be allowed to preserve the family’s social station by exercising her talents as a glassmaker. Hemphill’s deft sense of line, engaging language and fast-paced plot combine smoothly as molten glass in this intricate family drama, in which modern self-determination eventually trumps tradition.
A fiery, feminist love story young teens, particularly girls, should just devour. (Verse novel. 11 & up)Pub Date: March 27, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-375-86109-3
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Feb. 28, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2012
There’s not much plot here, but readers will relish the opportunity to climb inside Autumn’s head.
The finely drawn characters capture readers’ attention in this debut.
Autumn and Phineas, nicknamed Finny, were born a week apart; their mothers are still best friends. Growing up, Autumn and Finny were like peas in a pod despite their differences: Autumn is “quirky and odd,” while Finny is “sweet and shy and everyone like[s] him.” But in eighth grade, Autumn and Finny stop being friends due to an unexpected kiss. They drift apart and find new friends, but their friendship keeps asserting itself at parties, shared holiday gatherings and random encounters. In the summer after graduation, Autumn and Finny reconnect and are finally ready to be more than friends. But on August 8, everything changes, and Autumn has to rely on all her strength to move on. Autumn’s coming-of-age is sensitively chronicled, with a wide range of experiences and events shaping her character. Even secondary characters are well-rounded, with their own histories and motivations.
There’s not much plot here, but readers will relish the opportunity to climb inside Autumn’s head. (Fiction. 14 & up)Pub Date: April 1, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-4022-7782-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Sourcebooks Fire
Review Posted Online: Feb. 12, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
Exactly what the title promises.
A grieving teen’s devotion to romance films might ruin her chances at actual romance.
Liz Buxbaum has always adored rom-coms, not least for helping her still feel close to her screenwriter mother, who died when she was little. Liz hopes that her senior year might turn into a real-life romantic fantasy, as an old crush has moved back to town, cuter and nicer than ever. Surely she can get Michael to ask her to prom. If only Wes, the annoying boy next door, would help her with her scheming! This charming, fluffy concoction manages to pack into one goofy plot every conceivable trope, from fake dating to the makeover to the big misunderstanding. Creative, quirky, daydreaming Liz is just shy of an annoying stereotype, saved by a dry wit and unresolved grief and anger. Wes makes for a delightful bad boy with a good heart, and supporting characters—including a sassy best friend, a perfect popular rival, even a (not really) evil stepmother—all get the opportunity to transcend their roles. The only villain here is Liz’s lovelorn imagination, provoking her into foolish lies that cause actual hurt feelings; but she is sufficiently self-aware to make amends just in time for the most important trope of all: a blissfully happy ending. All characters seem to be White by default.
Exactly what the title promises. (Romance. 12-18)Pub Date: May 4, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-5344-6762-0
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Feb. 22, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2021
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