Although hardly an insightful examination of brotherly problems, ample basketball play-by-play makes this a more attractive...
Seventh-grade fraternal twins Russ and Owen (Athlete vs. Mathlete, 2013) return for a second outing, once again exploring in alternating first-person voices the differences between brothers as filtered through their basketball experiences.
Russ, the brainiac, and Owen, his athletically focused twin, are now getting along better, both doing their parts to make sure their basketball team has a winning season. Things are going well until the coach invites a pair of newcomers, identical twins Marcus and Mitch, to join the team midseason. These twins dress and act alike and have little interest in making friends outside their comfortable but seriously limiting brotherly relationship. Worse, they’re gifted athletically and academically, creating competition with both Russ and Owen, and the coach is giving them plenty of court time, which leaves Owen feeling especially jealous and very resentful. Remarkably, he even contemplates hurting one of the twins to save his place on the team. It takes an accidental injury that sidelines Marcus to expose the weaknesses the identical duo share and quite a lot of prompting from the more mature Russ and other teammates to get Owen to put the team’s needs before his own feelings. Once that’s accomplished, a too-easy resolution neatly wraps up the conflict.
Although hardly an insightful examination of brotherly problems, ample basketball play-by-play makes this a more attractive offering for reluctant readers. (Fiction. 10-14)Pub Date: Nov. 5, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-61963-129-8
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
A quick, agreeable caper, this may spark some discussion even as it entertains.
Myla and Peter step into the path of a gang when they unite forces to find Peter’s runaway brother, Randall.
As they follow the graffiti tags that Randall has been painting in honor of the boys’ deceased father, they uncover a sinister history involving stolen diamonds, disappearances, and deaths. It started long ago when the boys’ grandmother, a diamond-cutter, partnered with the head of the gang. She was rumored to have hidden his diamonds before her suspicious death, leaving clues to their whereabouts. Now everyone is searching, including Randall. The duo’s collaboration is initially an unwilling one fraught with misunderstandings. Even after Peter and Myla bond over being the only people of color in an otherwise white school (Myla is Indian-American; mixed-race Peter is Indian, African-American, and white), Peter can’t believe the gang is after Myla. But Myla possesses a necklace that holds a clue. Alternating first-person chapters allow peeks into how Myla, Peter, and Randall unravel the story and decipher clues. Savvy readers will put the pieces together, too, although false leads and red herrings are cleverly interwoven. The action stumbles at times, but it takes place against the rich backdrops of gritty New York City and history-laden Dobbs Ferry and is made all the more colorful by references to graffiti art and parkour.
A quick, agreeable caper, this may spark some discussion even as it entertains. (Mystery. 10-12)Pub Date: May 30, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-4197-2296-7
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Amulet/Abrams
Review Posted Online: Feb. 19, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Stands out neither as a folk-tale retelling, a coming-of-age story, nor a Holocaust novel.
A Holocaust tale with a thin “Hansel and Gretel” veneer from the author of The Devil’s Arithmetic (1988).
Chaim and Gittel, 14-year-old twins, live with their parents in the Lodz ghetto, forced from their comfortable country home by the Nazis. The siblings are close, sharing a sign-based twin language; Chaim stutters and communicates primarily with his sister. Though slowly starving, they make the best of things with their beloved parents, although it’s more difficult once they must share their tiny flat with an unpleasant interfaith couple and their Mischling (half-Jewish) children. When the family hears of their impending “wedding invitation”—the ghetto idiom for a forthcoming order for transport—they plan a dangerous escape. Their journey is difficult, and one by one, the adults vanish. Ultimately the children end up in a fictional child labor camp, making ammunition for the German war effort. Their story effectively evokes the dehumanizing nature of unremitting silence. Nevertheless, the dense, distancing narrative (told in a third-person contemporaneous narration focused through Chaim with interspersed snippets from Gittel’s several-decades-later perspective) has several consistency problems, mostly regarding the relative religiosity of this nominally secular family. One theme seems to be frustration with those who didn’t fight back against overwhelming odds, which makes for a confusing judgment on the suffering child protagonists.
Stands out neither as a folk-tale retelling, a coming-of-age story, nor a Holocaust novel. (author’s note) (Historical fiction. 12-14)Pub Date: March 6, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-399-25778-0
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Philomel
Review Posted Online: Dec. 20, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2018
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