Geeder does make the association and learns to truly appreciate Zeely in an interlude of growing up successfully captured...
By the time you find out that Geeder (Elizabeth) and her younger brother Toeboy (John) are Negro it doesn't really matter anyway, although that fact is a part of their composite personalities and it does help to stress the extraordinary fascination Geeder felt for Zeely Taber.
For the duration of this short book Geeder is a fully realized young girl with the imagination and intuition consistent with her age and bounciness. Her surroundings can always be shared with her—the old farm with its antique-furnished house lovingly cared for by her Uncle Ross, the special aura of a summer vacation away from home, the complexities of travelling alone by train, her sibling superiority/tenderness toward Toeboy. A summer holiday is a time for revelations and Geeder's is Zeely Tabor, the six and one-half foot tall young woman who helps tend pigs on Uncle Ross' farm. From a pictorial magazine article Geeder jumps to the conclusion that Zeely is really a Watutsi queen, and in a rare moment of self-revelation Zeely indicates how non-royal she is. Zeely's time of day is the night, and at one point Uncle Ross reflects that "a night traveller must be somebody who wants to walk tall. And to walk tall, you most certainly must have to run free...it is the free spirit in any of us breaking loose."
Geeder does make the association and learns to truly appreciate Zeely in an interlude of growing up successfully captured here. (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Feb. 1, 1966
ISBN: 1416914137
Page Count: 132
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 26, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1966
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A touching tale of preteen angst and translation troubles.
A trip to Vietnam did not figure in Laguna, California, girl Mai Le's summer plans!
Twelve-year-old Mai (Mia at school) was looking forward to a summer at the beach with her bestie, Montana, trying to catch the eye of HIM (a boy from school), but she's forced on to a plane to keep her grandmother, Bà, company on a trip of indeterminate length. Ông, Bà's husband, went missing during the Vietnam War, and a detective claims to have found a man who knows something about Ông. Mai and Bà stay in Bà's home village, while Mai's doctor father heads into the mountains to run a clinic. Mai's Vietnamese is rusty, and only teenage boy Minh speaks English (but with a Texas accent). The heat, the mosquitoes...even the maybe-relatives are torture. Out of touch with all things American, Mai worries that Montana may put the moves on HIM; and the only girl in the village her age, Ut, is obsessed with frogs. For her sophomore effort, Newbery Honor author Lai delivers a funny, realistic tale of family and friendship and culture clashes. The subtle humor of clunky translations of Vietnamese into English and vice versa are a great contrast to Mai’s sharp and sometimes-snarky observations that offer a window into Vietnamese village life and language.
A touching tale of preteen angst and translation troubles. (Fiction. 9-12)Pub Date: Feb. 17, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-06-222918-2
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Oct. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2014
An emotional and powerful story with soaring poetry.
A fourth grader navigates the complicated world of immigration.
Betita Quintero loves the stories her father tells about the Aztlán (the titular land of cranes), how their people emigrated south but were fabled to return. Betita also loves to write. She considers words like “intonation,” “alchemy,” and “freedom” to be almost magic, using those and other words to create picture poems to paint her feelings, just like her fourth grade teacher, Ms. Martinez, taught her. But there are also words that are scary, like “cartel,” a word that holds the reason why her family had to emigrate from México to the United States. Even though Betita and her parents live in California, a “sanctuary state,” the seemingly constant raids and deportations are getting to be more frequent under the current (unnamed) administration. Thinking her family is safe because they have a “petition…to fly free,” Betita is devastated when her dad is taken away by ICE. Without their father, the lives of the Quinteros, already full of fear and uncertainty, are further derailed when they make the small mistake of missing a highway exit. Salazar’s verse novel presents contemporary issues such as “zero tolerance” policies, internalized racism, and mass deportations through Betita’s innocent and hopeful eyes, making the complex topics easy to understand through passionate, lyrical verses.
An emotional and powerful story with soaring poetry. (Verse fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-338-34380-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: May 16, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
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