Tallulah Jones, recent Florida-to-California transplant, wears all the latest surfer-girl fashions and earns the nickname Hurricane Girl after telling a whale of a story about her surfing skills. The surf as well as the jig is up when her new friends take her to the beach and learn the truth about her nonexistent wave-catching skills. She’s now an outcast at school, but she won’t stay away from the ocean. On weekends she’s learning the sport from the talented but dorky Katie. Due to a series of wrong-place-wrong-time mishaps, Tallulah never gets to prove her new talents until she has to rescue expert surfer Jenna, who tries to take her board out during a storm. Tallulah isn’t always graceful or even gracious, but her dedication to surfing and resolve in standing up to her bullies make her a believable heroine. She sometimes wipes out in the boy and friendship departments, but she also gets back up and tries to set things right. The beauty and danger of surfing are captured through Tallulah’s mile-a-minute, often funny descriptions. (Fiction. 12 & up)
Pub Date: June 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-8027-2063-4
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Walker
Review Posted Online: Dec. 30, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2010
Seventeen-year-old Chuy dies in the opening scene of this view from beyond; thereafter the story is told by his ghost, “invisible and touchable as light.” Stabbed three times after commenting on a guy’s yellow shoes in the restroom of Club Estrella, Chuy never gets to dance with his friend Rachel. Instead, “like a balloon in the wind,” he floats around town observing the life he’s left. He meets and falls in love with Crystal, who has committed suicide, helps a dead homeless man, flies in formation with some geese, and even takes in a Raiders game. Chuy realizes that he’ll soon be heading for the afterlife but is grateful for the life he had. The ghosts offer no inside information on the big questions: Do we come back? Does heaven exist? How does the Almighty decide who lives and dies? Soto writes with a touch as light as Chuy’s ghost and with humor, wonderment, and a generosity toward life. (Fiction. 12+)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-15-204774-3
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2003
Green seamlessly bridges the gap between the present and the existential, and readers will need more than one box of tissues...
He’s in remission from the osteosarcoma that took one of his legs. She’s fighting the brown fluid in her lungs caused by tumors. Both know that their time is limited.
Sparks fly when Hazel Grace Lancaster spies Augustus “Gus” Waters checking her out across the room in a group-therapy session for teens living with cancer. He’s a gorgeous, confident, intelligent amputee who always loses video games because he tries to save everyone. She’s smart, snarky and 16; she goes to community college and jokingly calls Peter Van Houten, the author of her favorite book, An Imperial Affliction, her only friend besides her parents. He asks her over, and they swap novels. He agrees to read the Van Houten and she agrees to read his—based on his favorite bloodbath-filled video game. The two become connected at the hip, and what follows is a smartly crafted intellectual explosion of a romance. From their trip to Amsterdam to meet the reclusive Van Houten to their hilariously flirty repartee, readers will swoon on nearly every page. Green’s signature style shines: His carefully structured dialogue and razor-sharp characters brim with genuine intellect, humor and desire. He takes on Big Questions that might feel heavy-handed in the words of any other author: What do oblivion and living mean? Then he deftly parries them with humor: “My nostalgia is so extreme that I am capable of missing a swing my butt never actually touched.” Dog-earing of pages will no doubt ensue.
Green seamlessly bridges the gap between the present and the existential, and readers will need more than one box of tissues to make it through Hazel and Gus’ poignant journey. (Fiction. 15 & up)Pub Date: Jan. 10, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-525-47881-2
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: Jan. 9, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2012
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