bookshelf

DARNELL ROCK REPORTING

Name: DARNELL ROCK REPORTING
Author: Walter Dean Myers
ISBN: 0-385-32096-5

by Walter Dean Myers ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 1, 1994

bookshelf

Darnell isn't bad, but he meets his teachers' (and his own) expectations by earning poor grades and getting into trouble for his attitude. After he halfheartedly decides to work on the school paper, he's as surprised as anyone when his offhand idea—making a vacant lot into a garden where the homeless can raise their own vegetables, rather than paving it for parking—is picked up by the local newspaper and widely praised. Spurred by success and by curiosity about the contrasting lives of his dad, who has a good job, and Dad's Vietnam buddy Sweeby, now homeless, Darnell interviews Sweeby and gains insight into the difficulties many African-Americans experience in getting a decent job. Myers gets things right, especially the banter and concerns of kids like Darnell, who, even with real talents and a stable family, may "fall through the cracks" of a school without the resources or will to engage them; and the fate of Darnell's proposal, which is realistically presented as simplistic as well as imaginative. The book itself is not simplistic, as the deftly drawn characters have both strengths and weaknesses. Many readers—and not just those in multiracial, big-city areas like the one depicted here—will recognize themselves in Darnell and his friends. (Fiction. 10-14)

Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1994

ISBN: 0-385-32096-5

Page Count: 106

Publisher: Delacorte

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1994

Categories:

TEENS & YOUNG ADULT FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
FREDERICK DOUGLASS
by Walter Dean Myers ; illustrated by Floyd Cooper

- BOOK REVIEW
JUBA!
by Walter Dean Myers

- BOOK REVIEW
MONSTER
by Walter Dean Myers ; adapted by Guy A. Sims ; illustrated by Dawud Anyabwile

bookshelf

THE PICKLE KING

by Rebecca Promitzer ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2010

bookshelf

The plot of this rain-soaked dark comedy doesn’t quite hold water, but Promitzer chucks in so many bizarre twists and revolting details that readers will likely forgive her. In getting to the bottom of several ugly secrets in their seemingly ordinary town, 11-year-old Bea and five other local children squabble and bond as they gather clues from a long-dead corpse, two ghosts, a stolen bag of human intestines, a serial-killer surgeon, a community of mentally disturbed outcasts, a mansion stocked with human parts and more. Punctuated by attacks from human punks and oversized rats, a race up a dark staircase against a tide of roaches and like rousing events, the young sleuths’ investigation ultimately winds up in an encounter with a centuries-old tycoon kept alive by a steady supply of replacement organs harvested from the town’s terrorized residents. Bea weathers it all with shaky but admirable fortitude—retaining enough aplomb in the end to keep her vanished father’s eyeball in the freezer as a memento. Must reading for fans of Jack Gantos’s Love Curse of the Rumbaughs (2006). (Detective fantasy. 11-13)

Pub Date: March 1, 2010

ISBN: 978-0-545-17087-1

Page Count: 416

Publisher: Chicken House/Scholastic

Review Posted Online: Jan. 14, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2010

Categories:

TEENS & YOUNG ADULT FICTION | TEENS & YOUNG ADULT PARANORMAL & SUPERNATURAL | TEENS & YOUNG ADULT MYSTERY & THRILLER

bookshelf

D, MY NAME IS DANITA

by Norma Fox Mazer ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 1, 1991

bookshelf

Like earlier protagonists of this alphabetical series, eighth-grader Danita learns something about a parent that forever alters her family's balance. First it's mysterious phone calls; then Danita keeps noticing the same red-sneakered 19-year-old, in too many situations to be coincidence. Even moderately astute readers will enjoy realizing long before Danita does that ``D.T.'' is her half-brother: born as the result of a high-school romance, Dad has never known of the boy's existence. The drama of a nice youth hoping to find a father but encountering a cold reception from an otherwise affectionate family man who simply freezes because he has no idea how to respond is sketched lightly here; the focus is on narrator Danita, who is the first approached by her brother, and who intervenes on his behalf—and, fleshing out the story, on her contrasting concerns with boys and a best friend. In a refreshing denouement, it's Mom (the last to know: Dad doesn't trust her reaction) who points out that D.T. should get a real welcome. No melodrama here; just another of Mazer's unique, believable families, coping despite their particular frailties. Again, light but nourishing, with plenty of reader appeal. (Fiction. 10-14)