A worthy companion book, with storytelling strong enough to interest even readers unfamiliar with the original novel or its...
The story of Eponine Thenardier, a side character from Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables, is told here, from early childhood to untimely death.
Born to almost cartoonishly money-hungry parents, Eponine is taught to steal from a young age. She feels uncomfortable cheating people, but she loves the way a successful night of thievery elicits her mother’s pride and affection. As Eponine grows up, her internal conflicts grow deeper: please her family or follow her conscience? Do good deeds or cruel ones? Steal or starve? Eponine’s choices and observations are rendered in simple and evocative language—a pebble of sadness knocking in her heart when she longs to be loved, viscerally felt daydreams “that one day I’d be pretty, and I walk with a boy…in a skirt that went shush…shush…shush.” When Eponine’s father kills a man in a robbery gone wrong, the family flees to Paris. There, Eponine meets Marius, the young man whom readers know from the prologue, if not from the source text, that she will die saving. Though the bittersweetness of Eponine’s doomed, unrequited love shines through the later parts of the book, the deeper story about goodness and kindness is just as carefully and compellingly told.
A worthy companion book, with storytelling strong enough to interest even readers unfamiliar with the original novel or its many adaptations. (Historical fiction. 12-18)Pub Date: Aug. 25, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-545-82960-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Chicken House/Scholastic
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2015
A high-concept premise that falls short in its execution.
A teenage girl finds herself alone after everyone else in her town mysteriously disappears, leaving her scrambling to figure out how to find them all.
One late summer day, everybody in July Fielding’s town disappears. She is left to piece together what happened, following a series of cryptic signs she finds around town urging her to “GET THEM BACK.” The narrative moves back and forth between July’s present and the events of the summer before, when her relationship with her best friend, cross-country team co-captain Sydney, starts to fracture due to a combination of jealousy over July’s new relationship with a cute boy called Sam and sweet up-and-coming freshman Ella’s threatening to overtake Syd’s status as star of the track team. The team members participate in a ritual in which they jump off a cliff into the rocky waters below at the end of their Friday practice runs. Though Ella is reluctant, Syd pressures her to jump. Short, frenetically paced sections move the story along quickly, and there is much foreshadowing pointing to something terrible that occurred at the end of that summer, which may be the key to July’s current predicament, but there is much misdirection too. Ultimately this is a story without enough setup to make the turn the book takes in the end feel fully developed or earned. All characters read white.
A high-concept premise that falls short in its execution. (Fiction. 14-18)Pub Date: Sept. 19, 2023
ISBN: 9780593327173
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2023
Even so, this remains Macbeth, arguably the Bard of Avon’s most durable and multilayered tragedy, and overall, this enhanced...
A pairing of the text of the Scottish Play with a filmed performance, designed with the Shakespeare novice in mind.
The left side of the screen of this enhanced e-book contains a full version of Macbeth, while the right side includes a performance of the dialogue shown (approximately 20 lines’ worth per page). This granular focus allows newcomers to experience the nuances of the play, which is rich in irony, hidden intentions and sudden shifts in emotional temperature. The set and costuming are deliberately simple: The background is white, and Macbeth’s “armor” is a leather jacket. But nobody’s dumbing down their performances. Francesca Faridany is particularly good as a tightly coiled Lady Macbeth; Raphael Nash-Thompson gives his roles as the drunken porter and a witch a garrulousness that carries an entertainingly sinister edge. The presentation is not without its hiccups. Matching the video on the right with the text on the left means routinely cutting off dramatic moments; at one point, users have to swipe to see and read the second half of a scene’s closing couplet—presumably an easy fix. A “tap to translate” button on each page puts the text into plain English, but the pop-up text covers up Shakespeare’s original, denying any attempts at comparison; moreover, the translation mainly redefines more obscure words, suggesting that smaller pop-ups for individual terms might be more meaningful.
Even so, this remains Macbeth, arguably the Bard of Avon’s most durable and multilayered tragedy, and overall, this enhanced e-book makes the play appealing and graspable to students . (Enhanced e-book. 12 & up)Pub Date: Sept. 9, 2013
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: The New Book Press LLC
Review Posted Online: Nov. 6, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2013
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