by Susan Shaw ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 8, 2009
What do you do when the world stops making sense? When your mother dies in a house fire trying to save a cat. When 24 of your classmates die in a fire, but you and your best friend survive. When people blame you for surviving and come to your house to throw garbage in your yard and chant “Murderer! Murderer!” Fourteen-year-old Joseph Edward Campbell keeps a journal, to “fill time, fill the page, fill my mind,” anything to keep himself from thinking. He fills three notebooks, writing about “nowhere stuff”—the color blue, vanilla ice cream, crickets and autumn leaves. But the journal effectively pulls readers into Joey’s tortured mind, gradually revealing the whole story of how he and Maureen McGillicuddy survived and how his father and others nurture the healing process through quiet support and well-meaning clichés about life. Shaw’s prose is simple and fast-moving, effectively using the indirection of journal entries to give voice to Joey’s anguish. The wrenching premise and Joey’s first-person point of view make this a story with broad appeal. (Fiction. 10-14)
Pub Date: Sept. 8, 2009
ISBN: 978-1-4169-6129-1
Page Count: 208
Publisher: McElderry
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2009
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by Karen Cushman ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 14, 2006
It’s 1949, and 13-year-old Francine Green lives in “the land of ‘Sit down, Francine’ and ‘Be quiet, Francine’ ” at All Saints School for Girls in Los Angeles. When she meets Sophie Bowman and her father, she’s encouraged to think about issues in the news: the atomic bomb, peace, communism and blacklisting. This is not a story about the McCarthy era so much as one about how one girl—who has been trained to be quiet and obedient by her school, family, church and culture—learns to speak up for herself. Cushman offers a fine sense of the times with such cultural references as President Truman, Hopalong Cassidy, Montgomery Clift, Lucky Strike, “duck and cover” and the Iron Curtain. The dialogue is sharp, carrying a good part of this story of friends and foes, guilt and courage—a story that ought to send readers off to find out more about McCarthy, his witch-hunt and the First Amendment. Though not a happily-ever-after tale, it dramatizes how one person can stand up to unfairness, be it in front of Senate hearings or in the classroom. (author’s note) (Fiction. 10-14)
Pub Date: Aug. 14, 2006
ISBN: 0-618-50455-9
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Clarion Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2006
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by Marina Budhos ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 1, 2006
Illegal immigrant sisters learn a lot about themselves when their family faces deportation in this compelling contemporary drama. Immigrants from Bangladesh, Nadira, her older sister Aisha and their parents live in New York City with expired visas. Fourteen-year-old Nadira describes herself as “the slow-wit second-born” who follows Aisha, the family star who’s on track for class valedictorian and a top-rate college. Everything changes when post-9/11 government crack-downs on Muslim immigrants push the family to seek asylum in Canada where they are turned away at the border and their father is arrested by U.S. immigration. The sisters return to New York living in constant fear of detection and trying to pretend everything is normal. As months pass, Aisha falls apart while Nadira uses her head in “a right way” to save her father and her family. Nadira’s need for acceptance by her family neatly parallels the family’s desire for acceptance in their adopted country. A perceptive peek into the lives of foreigners on the fringe. (endnote) (Fiction. 10-14)
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2006
ISBN: 1-4169-0351-8
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Ginee Seo/Atheneum
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2005
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