An engaging tale about family and migration.
A Mayan girl immigrates to the United States in this middle-grade novel.
Twelve-year-old Ixchel is used to being away from her father, who works in California and occasionally comes home to Mérida, Mexico, where the tween’s mother and grandmother are raising her. But the girl is not accustomed to him failing to answer her letters. When Ixchel’s mother announces that she had a vision that the tween should join her father in the United States, the girl’s world is upended. She slowly warms to the idea, and her friend Rosa, whose brother lives in Texas, decides to make the trip with her. The girls make their way to Tijuana, but the “coyote” whose name they were given has left, and they are stuck with his nephew, who is well intentioned but inexperienced. After a first attempt at crossing the border fails, he sends the girls through a tunnel, where Rosa gets caught by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Ixchel narrowly escapes an attacker. Ixchel makes her way to Los Angeles, but her father is not overjoyed to see her, and she discovers his new wife and baby. With help from the art dealer who sells her mother’s weavings in his gallery, Ixchel and her father eventually reconcile, and she comes to terms with making a new life for herself in America. Patience tells a story of migration appropriate for young readers without being overly sanitized—for instance, the tension is palpable in Ixchel’s confrontation with her attacker, and there is mild violence. But the overall danger level is low, and the book never goes into detail about the threats an unaccompanied girl would likely face. While the depictions of Yucatecan life are vivid and well researched, they are clearly written for an American audience (“Although hundreds of years have passed since the conquistadores came from Spain, we Yucatec Maya are still proud to speak our language”). The plot and pacing are solid, and the characters are well developed, making for an enjoyable and educational story for young readers.
An engaging tale about family and migration.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-957146-98-0
Page Count: 200
Publisher: Paper Angel Press
Review Posted Online: Oct. 24, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A solid debut: fluent, funny and eminently sequel-worthy.
Inventively tweaking a popular premise, Jensen pits two Incredibles-style families with superpowers against each other—until a new challenge rises to unite them.
The Johnsons invariably spit at the mere mention of their hated rivals, the Baileys. Likewise, all Baileys habitually shake their fists when referring to the Johnsons. Having long looked forward to getting a superpower so that he too can battle his clan’s nemeses, Rafter Bailey is devastated when, instead of being able to fly or something else cool, he acquires the “power” to strike a match on soft polyester. But when hated classmate Juanita Johnson turns up newly endowed with a similarly bogus power and, against all family tradition, they compare notes, it becomes clear that something fishy is going on. Both families regard themselves as the heroes and their rivals as the villains. Someone has been inciting them to fight each other. Worse yet, that someone has apparently developed a device that turns real superpowers into silly ones. Teaching themselves on the fly how to get past their prejudice and work together, Rafter, his little brother, Benny, and Juanita follow a well-laid-out chain of clues and deductions to the climactic discovery of a third, genuinely nefarious family, the Joneses, and a fiendishly clever scheme to dispose of all the Baileys and Johnsons at once. Can they carry the day?
A solid debut: fluent, funny and eminently sequel-worthy. (Adventure. 10-12)Pub Date: Jan. 21, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-06-220961-0
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Nov. 1, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
Highly amusing.
The incompetent parents from The Willoughbys (2008) find themselves thawed by global warming.
Henry and Frances haven’t aged since the accident that buried them in snow and froze them for 30 years in the Swiss Alps. Their Rip van Winkle–ish return is archly comedic, with the pair, a medical miracle, realizing (at last!) how much they’ve lost and how baffled they are now. Meanwhile, their eldest son, Tim, is grown and in charge of his adoptive father’s candy empire, now threatened with destitution by a congressional ban on candy (opposed by an unnamed Bernie Sanders). He is father to 11-year-old Richie, who employs ad-speak whenever he talks about his newest toys, like a remote-controlled car (“The iconic Lamborghini bull adorns the hubcaps and hood”). But Richie envies Winston Poore, the very poor boy next door, who has a toy car carved for him by his itinerant encyclopedia-salesman father. Winston and his sister, Winifred, plan to earn money for essentials by offering their services as companions to lonely Richie while their mother dabbles, spectacularly unsuccessfully, in running a B&B. Lowry’s exaggerated characters and breezy, unlikely plot are highly entertaining. She offers humorous commentary both via footnotes advising readers of odd facts related to the narrative and via Henry and Frances’ reentry challenges. The threads of the story, with various tales of parents gone missing, fortunes lost or never found, and good luck in the end, are gathered most satisfactorily and warmheartedly.
Highly amusing. (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Sept. 29, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-358-42389-8
Page Count: 176
Publisher: HMH Books
Review Posted Online: June 15, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2020
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