Beautifully illustrates how sharing old stories can be the best way to learn how to share new ones.
While Tiến is fluent in English, his Vietnamese refugee parents are not, leaving them struggling at times for a shared language.
Tiến’s mom, Hiền, asks him to read aloud the fairy tales he checks out from the library; they both love them, and she can use them to practice English. When Tiến selects “Tattercoats,” his seamstress mother tells him that there is a Vietnamese version that her own mother told her, long ago. As he reads the story of love, longing, and travel across a sea, Hiền is reminded of family she left behind in Vietnam while Tiến tries to navigate his own first love, a boy he is friends with. Le Nguyen’s gorgeous, flowing, detailed illustrations deftly weave Vietnamese and Western fairy-tale worlds together with Hiền’s memory of her past and Tiến’s struggle over coming out. The rich color palette highlights both the layers within each panel as well as serving as a road map for readers by indicating whether the panels are set in the present, the past, or within the fairy tale. This clever use of color smooths the way for the sophisticated embedding of stories within a story that highlights the complex dynamics between first-generation and second-generation family members. Warm, loving family and friends are a refreshing alternative to immigrant stories that focus on family problems.
Beautifully illustrates how sharing old stories can be the best way to learn how to share new ones. (author’s note, notes about the illustrations, bonus artwork) (Fiction. 13-17)Pub Date: Oct. 13, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-12529-8
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Random House Graphic
Review Posted Online: July 26, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
An emotional debut that celebrates the joy that comes from healing.
Two teens’ summer romance gets complicated by a long-kept family secret.
Jupiter Moon Ray Evans’ parents were in a car accident the day she was born—her father died, and her mom suddenly became both a widow and a mother. Ray is named after the dad she never knew, and his absence is a tangible part of her family. She hates that her birthday can never just be about her, but this year her best friend from boarding school is coming to Memphis, and they are celebrating at the roller rink, the one place Ray can get lost in her own world. While skating she meets Orion, and for both of them, it is love at first sight. Orion is also missing a piece of his family: Almost 10 years ago his little sister was hit and killed by a bus, and his happy family was destroyed. Orion finds a feeling of peace in swimming, which helps with his sensory processing disorder as well as providing an escape from his dad’s grief. Although the two Black teens will be in different states in the fall, they tentatively pursue a relationship. However, when a family secret that links them is revealed, they must decide if they can ever be anything to one another. Through a blend of prose and found poetry, this quiet novel thoughtfully explores the impact of absence on love.
An emotional debut that celebrates the joy that comes from healing. (Fiction. 13-17)Pub Date: May 31, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-593-42925-9
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: March 1, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2022
Tackles deep subjects but misses the mark.
A complicated story of family dysfunction blended with a frothy romance.
Seventeen-year-old Olivia Schwartz’s drive masks the intense anxiety she’s carried since finding her beloved older brother dead six years ago. Her parents never mention Logan; her 5-year-old twin brothers don’t even know he existed. But on a family cruise, carefree Jules—an old summer camp friend who happens to be there too—tempts Olivia to put aside the science fair research that could get her a prestigious internship with a surgeon, drink alcohol to ease her social awkwardness (consider it “a trial run” for college parties, Jules says), and go after sexy fellow passenger Sebastian. Olivia’s deep repression starts to ease as she tries a more relaxed teen life for the first time, but when she opens up about Logan, Sebastian and Jules keep saying things about him that bother her, leading to an explosive revelation that shakes up Olivia’s understanding of her family. Wooden characters serve only to reflect and refract Olivia’s story, and the thin plot contrivances are distracting. The thematic disconnect is troubling: This is both a book in which addiction is a leitmotif and also one in which problematic drinking is normalized, as Olivia repeatedly asks for Jules’ flask to ease her emotional distress. Olivia is Jewish, and most characters read White; Jules is cued East Asian, and there is some diversity in race and sexuality in the supporting cast.
Tackles deep subjects but misses the mark. (Fiction. 13-17)Pub Date: June 20, 2023
ISBN: 9780063230996
Page Count: 320
Publisher: HarperTeen
Review Posted Online: May 24, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2023
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf
