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WHERE I BELONG

Though stories of contemporary Indian youth are badly needed, this one fails to engage.

A Mohawk girl adopted into a white family gets in touch with her heritage against the backdrop of the 1990 Oka crisis in Quebec.

Carrie has always felt different. The “only black-haired, dark-skinned girl” in her small Ontario town, she even feels out of step with her parents. Both doctors, they expect her to study hard, avoid boys and excel in science. She also has strange, vivid dreams; these are becoming more frequent and violent, featuring a teenage boy with a long, black braid. When she sees that boy at a youth-hockey tournament, she feels an instant connection. In short order, she learns that her biological father is a Mohawk who lives with his mother and her twin sister on the Kahnawake reserve, where Indians are protesting the building of a golf course on a burial ground. When she goes there to spend a week with her newfound family, she becomes caught up in the protests. A Mohawk herself, White’s story suffers from its brevity. Carrie’s adoptive parents are two-dimensional caricatures, and Carrie’s acceptance of her new identity is achieved with a speedy placidity that readers will find hard to believe. Still, her sister’s resistance to Carrie is believable, giving the narrative a badly needed edge as Mohawk-army tensions escalate. Frustratingly, although the story ends with the resolution of the crisis, readers never learn what actually happened.

Though stories of contemporary Indian youth are badly needed, this one fails to engage. (Historical fiction. 10-14)

Pub Date: March 15, 2015

ISBN: 978-1-896580-77-7

Page Count: 112

Publisher: Tradewind Books

Review Posted Online: Jan. 9, 2015

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2015

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SEE YOU IN THE COSMOS

Riveting, inspiring, and sometimes hilarious.

If you made a recording to be heard by the aliens who found the iPod, what would you record?

For 11-year-old Alex Petroski, it's easy. He records everything. He records the story of how he travels to New Mexico to a rocket festival with his dog, Carl Sagan, and his rocket. He records finding out that a man with the same name and birthday as his dead father has an address in Las Vegas. He records eating at Johnny Rockets for the first time with his new friends, who are giving him a ride to find his dead father (who might not be dead!), and losing Carl Sagan in the wilds of Las Vegas, and discovering he has a half sister. He even records his own awful accident. Cheng delivers a sweet, soulful debut novel with a brilliant, refreshing structure. His characters manage to come alive through the “transcript” of Alex’s iPod recording, an odd medium that sounds like it would be confusing but really works. Taking inspiration from the Voyager Golden Record released to space in 1977, Alex, who explains he has “light brown skin,” records all the important moments of a journey that takes him from a family of two to a family of plenty.

Riveting, inspiring, and sometimes hilarious. (Fiction. 10-14)

Pub Date: Feb. 28, 2017

ISBN: 978-0-399-18637-0

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Dial Books

Review Posted Online: Oct. 18, 2016

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2016

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THE SCHOOL FOR GOOD AND EVIL

From the School for Good and Evil series , Vol. 1

Rich and strange (and kitted out with an eye-catching cover), but stronger in the set pieces than the internal logic.

Chainani works an elaborate sea change akin to Gregory Maguire’s Wicked (1995), though he leaves the waters muddied.

Every four years, two children, one regarded as particularly nice and the other particularly nasty, are snatched from the village of Gavaldon by the shadowy School Master to attend the divided titular school. Those who survive to graduate become major or minor characters in fairy tales. When it happens to sweet, Disney princess–like Sophie and  her friend Agatha, plain of features, sour of disposition and low of self-esteem, they are both horrified to discover that they’ve been dropped not where they expect but at Evil and at Good respectively. Gradually—too gradually, as the author strings out hundreds of pages of Hogwarts-style pranks, classroom mishaps and competitions both academic and romantic—it becomes clear that the placement wasn’t a mistake at all. Growing into their true natures amid revelations and marked physical changes, the two spark escalating rivalry between the wings of the school. This leads up to a vicious climactic fight that sees Good and Evil repeatedly switching sides. At this point, readers are likely to feel suddenly left behind, as, thanks to summary deus ex machina resolutions, everything turns out swell(ish).

Rich and strange (and kitted out with an eye-catching cover), but stronger in the set pieces than the internal logic. (Fantasy. 11-13)

Pub Date: May 14, 2013

ISBN: 978-0-06-210489-2

Page Count: 496

Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: Feb. 12, 2013

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2013

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