by Andrea Davis Pinkney ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 1, 1998
A surprisingly awkward novel from Pinkney (Bill Pickett, 1996, etc.) about the comings and goings in an African-American family; it captures the pace of life in a small town in upstate New York at the cost of losing readers along the way. As she has for the last six summers, Nell, 12, enjoys staying with her great aunt, Ursa, and 14-year-old son Foley, especially this year, when Foley’s friend Slade Montgomery has blossomed into a handsome, smooth-talking charmer. The idyll goes sour when Slade produces a Raven .25 handgun, persuades Nell to hide it in her old dollhouse, and is shortly thereafter found dead. Just before the funeral, Foley takes the gun and is seen hopping a train, leaving town just as his father, Slade’s father, Nell’s father Wes, and Wes’s father had done. Nell narrates, and Foley obviously suffers a profound shock, but Ursa’s losses and internal conflicts occupy the story’s emotional center. Talky, slow, and off the mark, this tale requires readers to get past the plot contrivances and logical gaps—Ursa opens the dollhouse but doesn’t find the gun because the dog has removed it, and is unaware that Slade is the third teenager in the county shot in the past year—and to penetrate Ursa’s wooden, long-winded utterances for the genuine emotions beneath. Cumulatively, the adults have far more presence than the younger generation, several important events are reported rather than seen, and Nell is largely an observer. (Fiction. 11-14)
Pub Date: April 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-15-201461-6
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1998
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by Andrea Davis Pinkney ; illustrated by Keith Henry Brown
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by Andrea Davis Pinkney ; illustrated by Gillian Flint
by John Boyne ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 12, 2006
Certain to provoke controversy and difficult to see as a book for children, who could easily miss the painful point.
After Hitler appoints Bruno’s father commandant of Auschwitz, Bruno (nine) is unhappy with his new surroundings compared to the luxury of his home in Berlin.
The literal-minded Bruno, with amazingly little political and social awareness, never gains comprehension of the prisoners (all in “striped pajamas”) or the malignant nature of the death camp. He overcomes loneliness and isolation only when he discovers another boy, Shmuel, on the other side of the camp’s fence. For months, the two meet, becoming secret best friends even though they can never play together. Although Bruno’s family corrects him, he childishly calls the camp “Out-With” and the Fuhrer “Fury.” As a literary device, it could be said to be credibly rooted in Bruno’s consistent, guileless characterization, though it’s difficult to believe in reality. The tragic story’s point of view is unique: the corrosive effect of brutality on Nazi family life as seen through the eyes of a naïf. Some will believe that the fable form, in which the illogical may serve the objective of moral instruction, succeeds in Boyne’s narrative; others will believe it was the wrong choice.
Certain to provoke controversy and difficult to see as a book for children, who could easily miss the painful point. (Fiction. 12-14)Pub Date: Sept. 12, 2006
ISBN: 0-385-75106-0
Page Count: 224
Publisher: David Fickling/Random
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2006
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SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
by Jenny Han ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 5, 2009
The wish-fulfilling title and sun-washed, catalog-beautiful teens on the cover will be enticing for girls looking for a...
Han’s leisurely paced, somewhat somber narrative revisits several beach-house summers in flashback through the eyes of now 15-year-old Isabel, known to all as Belly.
Belly measures her growing self by these summers and by her lifelong relationship with the older boys, her brother and her mother’s best friend’s two sons. Belly’s dawning awareness of her sexuality and that of the boys is a strong theme, as is the sense of summer as a separate and reflective time and place: Readers get glimpses of kisses on the beach, her best friend’s flirtations during one summer’s visit, a first date. In the background the two mothers renew their friendship each year, and Lauren, Belly’s mother, provides support for her friend—if not, unfortunately, for the children—in Susannah’s losing battle with breast cancer. Besides the mostly off-stage issue of a parent’s severe illness there’s not much here to challenge most readers—driving, beer-drinking, divorce, a moment of surprise at the mothers smoking medicinal pot together.
The wish-fulfilling title and sun-washed, catalog-beautiful teens on the cover will be enticing for girls looking for a diversion. (Fiction. 12-14)Pub Date: May 5, 2009
ISBN: 978-1-4169-6823-8
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2009
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by Jenny Han ; Siobhan Vivian
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BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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