Appalled by the experimental surgery on two baboons, African-American Jess and Australian David escape with them to the bush near where their scientist parents are working. Their barely formulated idea is to return the baboons to the wild; but Papio, with four electrodes in his head, is unnaturally passive, while big scars on Upi's chest betray why she has no stamina. At first it seems too soon to abandon them; even after both are adopted by a baboon tribe (along with the humans, who are accepted more warily), it seems necessary to protect them: Upi can't keep the pace when the baboons move on. Meanwhile, step by inexorable step, the young people become outlaws, stealing food from an African village and challenging the white hunter sent to find them—and to cruelly attack the baboons. In the end, battling the hunter, David and Jess lose sight of their purpose and unwittingly cause the destruction of the baboons. This Australian author (most notably, Baily's Bones, 1989) can be relied on for suspense—and for raising moral concerns in imaginatively provocative settings. The chief issue here is not so much animal rights as how a reasonable defense can degenerate into maintaining an untenable position at all costs. Meanwhile, some of the premises strain credulity, especially the ease with which the kids irrational—and then, in an epilogue, normal again. Still, a thought-provoking thriller with a respectable grounding in natural history and human nature. (Fiction. 11-15)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-8037-0900-5
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1992
Drawing on her experience with a relief organization on the Thai border, Ho tells the story of a Cambodian family, fleeing the rival factions of the 80's while hoping to gather resources to return to farming in their homeland. Narrator Dara, 12, and the remnants of her family have arrived at a refugee camp soon after her father's summary execution. At first, the camp is a haven: food is plentiful, seed rice is available, and they form a bond with another family- -brother Sarun falls in love with Nea, and Dara makes friends with Nea's cousin, Jantu, who contrives marvelous toys from mud and bits of scrap; made wise by adversity, Jantu understands that the process of creation outweighs the value of things, and that dead loved ones may live on in memory. The respite is brief: Vietnamese bombing disrupts the camp, and the family is temporarily but terrifyingly separated. Later, Jantu is wounded by friendly fire and doesn't survive; but her tragic death empowers Dara to confront Sarun, who's caught up in mindless militarism instigated by a charismatic leader, and persuade him to travel home with the others—to plant rice and build a family instead of waging war. Again, Ho (Rice Without Rain, 1990) skillfully shapes her story to dramatize political and humanitarian issues. The easily swayed Sarun lacks dimension, but the girls are more subtly drawn—Dara's growing courage and assertiveness are especially convincing and admirable. Touching, authentic, carefully wrought- -and with an unusually appealing jacket. (Fiction. 11-15)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1991
ISBN: 0-374-31340-7
Page Count: 163
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1991
After witnessing the rising tide of anti-Semitism in Nazi Germany, Daniel is suddenly transported, at age 14, from his comfortable life in Frankfurt to a Polish ghetto, then to Auschwitz and Buchenwald—losing most of his family along the way, seeing Nazi brutality of both the casual and the calculated kind, and recording atrocities with a smuggled camera (``What has happened to me?...Who am I? Where am I going?''). Matas, explicating an exhibit of photos and other materials at the new United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, creates a convincing composite youth and experience—fictional but carefully based on survivors' accounts. It's a savage story with no attempt to soften the culpability of the German people; Daniel's profound anger is easier to understand than is his father's compassion or his sister's plea to ``chose love. Always choose love.'' Daniel survives to be reunited, after the war, with his wife-to-be, but his dying friend's last word echoes beyond the happy ending: ``Remember...'' An unusual undertaking, effectively carried out. Chronology; glossary. (Fiction. 11-14)
Pub Date: April 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-590-46920-7
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1993
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