A teenager adopted as a foundling baby suddenly feels a need to track down his birth mother in this poignant and well-crafted story. Despite loving adoptive parents, an eager talent for high diving, and a training schedule that takes up every spare minute, James is beset by a restless, rootless feeling. Armed with only a fossil stone and the scrap of an address, he breaks training and secretly sets out for the Derby back country, following a 15-year-old trail. Juggling an array of characters and subplots in ways that enrich rather than crowd the story, Doherty (Dear Nobody, 1994, etc.) lays out not one journey, but two: Elizabeth, a child laden with guilt and remorse for loving a ``wild boy,'' gives birth alone in a hen shed, and treks over the rugged tor on a blustery day to leave her child, and her precious stone, at a strangers door; gathering clues as he goes, James eventually retraces her mountain journey, in reverse. The meeting of mother and son is brief—Elizabeth, now with husband and children, asks a single quiet question—but almost unbearably intense and, at least for James, cathartic; he returns to his familiar life with a new sense of completeness. Although of the two protagonists, Elizabeth has far less presence in the narrative, she is the more vivid character, and her heartrending, heroic trek gives this story most of its emotional impact; still, the space between diving platform and water is not the only place David exhibits native grace and courage. (Fiction. 11-15)
Pub Date: April 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-531-09512-6
Page Count: 166
Publisher: Orchard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1996
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
Despite the stale fat-to-curvy pattern, compelling world building with a Southern European, pseudo-Christian feel,...
Adventure drags our heroine all over the map of fantasyland while giving her the opportunity to use her smarts.
Elisa—Princess Lucero-Elisa de Riqueza of Orovalle—has been chosen for Service since the day she was born, when a beam of holy light put a Godstone in her navel. She's a devout reader of holy books and is well-versed in the military strategy text Belleza Guerra, but she has been kept in ignorance of world affairs. With no warning, this fat, self-loathing princess is married off to a distant king and is embroiled in political and spiritual intrigue. War is coming, and perhaps only Elisa's Godstone—and knowledge from the Belleza Guerra—can save them. Elisa uses her untried strategic knowledge to always-good effect. With a character so smart that she doesn't have much to learn, body size is stereotypically substituted for character development. Elisa’s "mountainous" body shrivels away when she spends a month on forced march eating rat, and thus she is a better person. Still, it's wonderfully refreshing to see a heroine using her brain to win a war rather than strapping on a sword and charging into battle.
Despite the stale fat-to-curvy pattern, compelling world building with a Southern European, pseudo-Christian feel, reminiscent of Naomi Kritzer's Fires of the Faithful (2002), keeps this entry fresh. (Fantasy. 12-14)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-06-202648-4
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Greenwillow Books
Review Posted Online: July 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2011
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