by Terri Fields ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 1, 2007
Using a Lazy-Susan approach of rotating perspectives, Fields manages to paint a broad canvas of life as a contemporary high-school student. Predictable characters have predictable worries. Mid-story, all the characters converge as another high-school student holds up the fast-food restaurant in which they work or eat—all of their lives are changed forever. Sound familiar? While this work is a tour de force of ventriloquism—the author nails every cadence and every syllable of the character she’s speaking through—many of the characters are stereotypical and shallow. Sadly, other kinds of stereotype persists here e.g., the character named Manuel is the one who needs the job at the fast-food place most and needs encouragement from an elderly patron (a former teacher) to encourage him to go to college and show him the ins and outs of a financial-aid form. Recommended only to teenagers looking for an easy read, one that doesn’t promise much depth or heavy-duty soul-searching. (Fiction. 12-14)
Pub Date: April 1, 2007
ISBN: 1-59643-219-5
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Deborah Brodie/Roaring Brook
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2007
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by Walter Dean Myers ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 31, 1999
The format of this taut and moving drama forcefully regulates the pacing; breathless, edge-of-the-seat courtroom scenes...
In a riveting novel from Myers (At Her Majesty’s Request, 1999, etc.), a teenager who dreams of being a filmmaker writes the story of his trial for felony murder in the form of a movie script, with journal entries after each day’s action.
Steve is accused of being an accomplice in the robbery and murder of a drug store owner. As he goes through his trial, returning each night to a prison where most nights he can hear other inmates being beaten and raped, he reviews the events leading to this point in his life. Although Steve is eventually acquitted, Myers leaves it up to readers to decide for themselves on his protagonist’s guilt or innocence.
The format of this taut and moving drama forcefully regulates the pacing; breathless, edge-of-the-seat courtroom scenes written entirely in dialogue alternate with thoughtful, introspective journal entries that offer a sense of Steve’s terror and confusion, and that deftly demonstrate Myers’s point: the road from innocence to trouble is comprised of small, almost invisible steps, each involving an experience in which a “positive moral decision” was not made. (Fiction. 12-14)Pub Date: May 31, 1999
ISBN: 0-06-028077-8
Page Count: 280
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1999
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by Gary Soto ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 1, 1997
Eddie, a young Mexican-American scraping by in the mean streets of Fresno, California, counts four dead relatives and one dead friend in the opening, in-your-face lines of this new novel from Soto (Snapshots from the Wedding, p. 228, etc.). In bleak sentences of whispered beauty, Eddie tells how he dropped out of vocational college and is attempting to get by with odd jobs. His aunt and friends want him to avenge the recent murder of his cousin, but Eddie just wants to find a way out. Everything he tries turns soura stint doing yard work ends when his boss's truck is stolen on Eddie's watchand life is a daily battle for survival. This unrelenting portrait is unsparing in squalid details: The glue sniffers, gangs, bums, casual knifings, filth, and stench are in the forefront of a life without much hope``Laundry wept from the lines, the faded flags of poor, ignorant, unemployable people.'' Soto plays the tale straightthe only sign of a ``happy'' ending is in Eddie's joining the Navy. The result is a sort of Fresno Salaam Bombay without the pockets of humanity that gave the original its charm. A valuable tale, it's one that makes no concessions. (glossary) (Fiction. 12-14)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1997
ISBN: 0-15-201333-4
Page Count: 148
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1997
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