In a fourth delightful book about a young hem who stir anticipates "mixed sea conversations" with tongue-tied trepidation, Bingo, now in junior high, has a rocky reunion with former classmate and sometime pen pal Melissa. Byars spins a witty web of dialogue here, airily supported by the insubstantial events; it takes pages for Bingo to catch wind of Melissa's reappearance and alternately stalk and hide from her in a grocery and around the neighborhood, with his mother as unwilling but amused accomplice (Dare be speak? Is it really Melissa? Is she now taller than he is?); it takes chapters until they meet; and it takes the whole book before they really talk. Meanwhile, Dad goes into a depression when his first novel gets a rejection; sidekick Billy Wentworth (who's turning out to be a Bogart-style rough diamond) gruffly keeps Bingo on track; and Bingo himself, still ingenuously serf-absorbed, verbalizes each experience as a future guide for baby brother Jamie (see title). There are some nifty Byars touches here—e.g., Bingo can't finish The Red Badge of Courage on schedule because he's so poignantly in tune with each sentence that he has to stop to ponder it (he's lucky enough to have a teacher who understands)—and a few serious undertones, but the focus is on the comical interaction and the sympathetic, on-target depiction of a nice, bright, romantic preadolescent with a quirky, affectionate family and an endlessly inquisitive mind. A gossamer tour de force. (Fiction. 9-13)
Pub Date: May 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-670-84491-8
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1992
Good Guys and Bad get just deserts in the end, and Stanley gets plenty of opportunities to display pluck and valor in this...
Sentenced to a brutal juvenile detention camp for a crime he didn't commit, a wimpy teenager turns four generations of bad family luck around in this sunburnt tale of courage, obsession, and buried treasure from Sachar (Wayside School Gets a Little Stranger, 1995, etc.).
Driven mad by the murder of her black beau, a schoolteacher turns on the once-friendly, verdant town of Green Lake, Texas, becomes feared bandit Kissin' Kate Barlow, and dies, laughing, without revealing where she buried her stash. A century of rainless years later, lake and town are memories—but, with the involuntary help of gangs of juvenile offenders, the last descendant of the last residents is still digging. Enter Stanley Yelnats IV, great-grandson of one of Kissin' Kate's victims and the latest to fall to the family curse of being in the wrong place at the wrong time; under the direction of The Warden, a woman with rattlesnake venom polish on her long nails, Stanley and each of his fellow inmates dig a hole a day in the rock-hard lake bed. Weeks of punishing labor later, Stanley digs up a clue, but is canny enough to conceal the information of which hole it came from. Through flashbacks, Sachar weaves a complex net of hidden relationships and well-timed revelations as he puts his slightly larger-than-life characters under a sun so punishing that readers will be reaching for water bottles.
Good Guys and Bad get just deserts in the end, and Stanley gets plenty of opportunities to display pluck and valor in this rugged, engrossing adventure. (Fiction. 9-13)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998
ISBN: 978-0-374-33265-5
Page Count: 233
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2000
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Though it lacks nuance, still a must-read.
Tyler is the son of generations of Vermont dairy farmers.
Mari is the Mexican-born daughter of undocumented migrant laborers whose mother has vanished in a perilous border crossing. When Tyler’s father is disabled in an accident, the only way the family can afford to keep the farm is by hiring Mari’s family. As Tyler and Mari’s friendship grows, the normal tensions of middle-school boy-girl friendships are complicated by philosophical and political truths. Tyler wonders how he can be a patriot while his family breaks the law. Mari worries about her vanished mother and lives in fear that she will be separated from her American-born sisters if la migra comes. Unashamedly didactic, Alvarez’s novel effectively complicates simple equivalencies between what’s illegal and what’s wrong. Mari’s experience is harrowing, with implied atrocities and immigration raids, but equally full of good people doing the best they can. The two children find hope despite the unhappily realistic conclusions to their troubles, in a story which sees the best in humanity alongside grim realities.
Though it lacks nuance, still a must-read. (Fiction. 9-11)Pub Date: Jan. 13, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-375-85838-3
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2008
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