Sweet but deafening, Emma’s contagious enthusiasm amplifies this wholesome fan letter for younger readers.
The exuberant journal of a star-struck fan who vows to stop at nothing—even doing chores!—for a chance to see her favorite boy band perform live.
Thirteen-year-old Emma can’t believe her luck when her friend Jenny invites her to see Boyz3000 at their concert in the Bahamas. Surely once she finally meets lead singer Aaron, he’ll realize they were meant to be. Thankfully, Emma isn’t completely boy crazy: she’s also a budding writer who draws inspiration from Aaron’s song lyrics. Though Emma marks her journal with a dizzying amount of hysterical punctuation and all caps—“If I couldn’t go, I ACTUALLY MIGHT DIE!!!!”—she articulately defends her love for music to her teacher, Ms. Pinkens, who asks her to rewrite her essay on the subject. “With just some notes and some words, music can make you smile, or cry, or laugh or feel anything you can imagine,” Emma says. It’s refreshing to see a heroine with such a close-knit family: Emma’s parents are willing to indulge her fantasy but only if she earns some of the trip money herself; along the way, Emma’s sister Dianna and her 16-year-old cousin Elyse selflessly help Emma achieve her goal. Emma agrees to walk dogs and bake cookies to raise funds for her plane ticket—her parents offer to put money toward it, too—but her efforts don’t yield immediate results, teaching her valuable lessons about perseverance, honesty, and the cost of doing business. Meanwhile, teenage angst runs high as Emma’s trip sparks jealousy among the other girls in her class, and a realistic game of one-upmanship ensues. Once she’s in the Bahamas, Emma learns to align her expectations with reality as she and Jenny scour the resort, looking for Aaron. But this gentle depiction of young love offers a glimmer of hope in an otherwise hopeless celebrity crush. Emma meets a cute boy who might make her forget what she came for and remember why she loves to write.
Sweet but deafening, Emma’s contagious enthusiasm amplifies this wholesome fan letter for younger readers.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2015
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Red Sky Presents
Review Posted Online: Sept. 2, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorkerstaff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
An engrossing, intense, and highly descriptive narrative chronicling the ghastly conditions three pregnant women suffered...
The incredible true story of three Jewish women who survived the Holocaust.
Priska, Rachel, and Anka were married Jewish women in their early 20s when the Nazis took control of Europe. Like millions of other Jews, they were forced to give up their normal lives, all of their belongings, and their homes. Shuttled into ghettos and then off to one of the most notorious camps, Auschwitz II-Birkenau, they suffered through the Nazis’ increasing atrocities. But these three women all held a secret: they were pregnant. They were moved from Auschwitz and ended up in Mauthausen, another notorious death camp. With facing the most horrible conditions imaginable, all three gave birth right before the Allies accepted Germany’s surrender. In this meticulously detailed account, Holden (Haatchi & Little B: The Inspiring True Story of One Boy and His Dog, 2014, etc.) compiles an enormous amount of information from interviews, letters, historical records, and personal visits to the sites where this story unfolded. The graphic history places readers in the moment and provides a sense of the enduring power of love that Priska, Rachel, and Anka had for their unborn children and for the husbands they so desperately hoped to see after the war. Even though it occurred more than 70 years ago, the story’s truth is so chillingly portrayed that it seems as if it could have happened recently. These three women and their infants survived in the face of death, and, Holden writes, “their babies went on to have babies of their own and create a second and then a third generation, all of whom continue to live their lives in defiance of Hitler’s plan to erase them from history and from memory.”
An engrossing, intense, and highly descriptive narrative chronicling the ghastly conditions three pregnant women suffered through at the hands of the Nazis.Pub Date: May 5, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-06-237025-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 28, 2015
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