Fleeing Mama's latest (Sid), Clare rifles her purse for enough money to get to Atlantic City, where she hopes to find Joey, the only one of Mama's boyfriends to treat her kindly. But Joey's now in California, explains ``A.J.,'' the old man in the hot-dog joint whose address appeared on Joey's one letter to Clare. Falling in with a band of other runaways, Clare learns their survival tactics—a combination of scrounging, opportunism, and petty thievery—and though she's horrified by the innocence of some of their victims, she finds she has no choice. In a series of lively developments, Clare is taken in by A.J. (Joey's dad, it turns out), steals food from him for her hungry friends, then gets A.J. to help them all escape after an abortive robbery attempt. But their greatest peril—unacknowledged even to each other—is a local social worker who is also a pimp. In persuading his victims to testify against him, Clare also decides to confide in Mama about Sid's crime against her. Nelson (And One for All, 1989) stretches credibility only slightly by giving all her bruised, likable young characters at least a modicum of hope at the end. Meanwhile, she skillfully crafts her plot to dramatize the plight of young teens with no recourse from either their families or a failed system, making clear the cruel events that drove them from their homes while softening them with the kids' natural reticence. Compelling. (Fiction. 11-16)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-531-05896-4
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Orchard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1992
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
At the end of the term, a new student who is black and Vietnamese finds a morsel of hope that she too will find a place in...
This is almost like a play for 18 voices, as Grimes (Stepping Out with Grandma Mac, not reviewed, etc.) moves her narration among a group of high school students in the Bronx.
The English teacher, Mr. Ward, accepts a set of poems from Wesley, his response to a month of reading poetry from the Harlem Renaissance. Soon there’s an open-mike poetry reading, sponsored by Mr. Ward, every month, and then later, every week. The chapters in the students’ voices alternate with the poems read by that student, defiant, shy, terrified. All of them, black, Latino, white, male, and female, talk about the unease and alienation endemic to their ages, and they do it in fresh and appealing voices. Among them: Janelle, who is tired of being called fat; Leslie, who finds friendship in another who has lost her mom; Diondra, who hides her art from her father; Tyrone, who has faith in words and in his “moms”; Devon, whose love for books and jazz gets jeers. Beyond those capsules are rich and complex teens, and their tentative reaching out to each other increases as through the poems they also find more of themselves. Steve writes: “But hey! Joy / is not a crime, though / some people / make it seem so.”
At the end of the term, a new student who is black and Vietnamese finds a morsel of hope that she too will find a place in the poetry. (Fiction. 12-15)Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-8037-2569-8
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2001
The wish-fulfilling title and sun-washed, catalog-beautiful teens on the cover will be enticing for girls looking for a...
Han’s leisurely paced, somewhat somber narrative revisits several beach-house summers in flashback through the eyes of now 15-year-old Isabel, known to all as Belly.
Belly measures her growing self by these summers and by her lifelong relationship with the older boys, her brother and her mother’s best friend’s two sons. Belly’s dawning awareness of her sexuality and that of the boys is a strong theme, as is the sense of summer as a separate and reflective time and place: Readers get glimpses of kisses on the beach, her best friend’s flirtations during one summer’s visit, a first date. In the background the two mothers renew their friendship each year, and Lauren, Belly’s mother, provides support for her friend—if not, unfortunately, for the children—in Susannah’s losing battle with breast cancer. Besides the mostly off-stage issue of a parent’s severe illness there’s not much here to challenge most readers—driving, beer-drinking, divorce, a moment of surprise at the mothers smoking medicinal pot together.
The wish-fulfilling title and sun-washed, catalog-beautiful teens on the cover will be enticing for girls looking for a diversion. (Fiction. 12-14)Pub Date: May 5, 2009
ISBN: 978-1-4169-6823-8
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2009
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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