Racism and her mother’s miscarriage bring an end to a happy chapter in the life of a California lighthouse-keeper’s daughter in this emotionally tumultuous novel, set in the 1880s. Until a group of townsfolk band together to drive the “celestials,” the small Chinese immigrant community, out of Crescent City, the only cloud in Eliza Jane’s sky is her goat Parthenia’s genius at escaping to munch on other people’s flowers. Despite her father’s orders to stay away from the “heathen,” however, she finds herself drawn to a talented young artist, and inadvertently becomes an angry, horrified witness to incidents of harassment that culminate in a nighttime mass kidnapping of Chinese women and children. Meanwhile, she is also wrestling with her religious faith after her mother loses a baby, and coming to discover that her father isn’t quite the pillar of strength she had always believed him to be. Drawing the forced removal from historical accounts, Fletcher enriches her tale’s setting with carefully researched detail about lighthouses and the families that kept them, and ultimately brings to her troubled protagonist both an epiphany that restores her respect for God and her father, and a new baby brother. An intense, meaty historical novel from the author of Shadow Spinner (1998). (Fiction. 10-12)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-689-84133-7
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Atheneum
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2001
On equal footing with a garden-variety potato.
The new kid in school endures becoming the school mascot.
Ben Hardy has never cared for potatoes, and this distaste has become a barrier to adjusting to life in his new Idaho town. His school’s mascot is the Spud, and after a series of misfortunes, Ben is enlisted to don the potato costume and cheer on his school’s team. Ben balances his duties as a life-sized potato against his desperate desire to hide the fact that he’s the dork in the suit. After all, his cute new crush, Jayla, wouldn’t be too impressed to discover Ben’s secret. The ensuing novel is a fairly boilerplate middle–grade narrative: snarky tween protagonist, the crush that isn’t quite what she seems, and a pair of best friends that have more going on than our hero initially believes. The author keeps the novel moving quickly, pushing forward with witty asides and narrative momentum so fast that readers won’t really mind that the plot’s spine is one they’ve encountered many times before. Once finished, readers will feel little resonance and move on to the next book in their to-read piles, but in the moment the novel is pleasant enough. Ben, Jayla, and Ben’s friend Hunter are white while Ellie, Ben’s other good pal, is Latina.
On equal footing with a garden-variety potato. (Fiction. 10-12)Pub Date: March 24, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-11866-5
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Nov. 23, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
Debut author Greenwald takes on the persona of Charlie Joe Jackson, a middle-school boy who hates reading. His avoidance...
Charlie Joe will do just about anything to avoid reading in this humorous cautionary tale for book-hating middle-grade students.
Debut author Greenwald takes on the persona of Charlie Joe Jackson, a middle-school boy who hates reading. His avoidance techniques get him into serious trouble with his parents, his teachers and his friends. After a year of avoiding reading—paying off a friend in ice-cream sandwiches to read books for him and manipulating his friends so he won’t have to read for the all-important position-paper project—Charlie Joe is forced to spend his summer vacation writing a book about his poor choices. Charlie Joe’s insider knowledge of the inner machinations of middle-school cliques will make younger readers smile in anticipation, and his direct address to readers makes make him feel like an older buddy showing the way. Sprinkled into the narrative are “Charlie Joe’s Tips” to avoiding reading books, written on faux notebook paper, that serve as a little diversion from the plot. As amusing as this is, Charlie Joe’s voice is not consistent and occasionally jars with the intelligent, smart-guy sarcasm that characterizes most of Charlie Joe’s prose.Pub Date: July 5, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-59643-691-6
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Roaring Brook Press
Review Posted Online: June 20, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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