A funny children's story dealing with wife abuse doesn't sound promising, but Byars pulls if off with her understanding light touch. She assigns the problem a manageable distance by making the abused wife not Jackson's mother, who's divorced, but his beloved former sitter Alma, a simple soul devoted to Jackson, her own baby Nicole (named for a soap-opera character), her extensive collection of Barbie dolls, and shopping. Jackson's growing concern over Alma's bruises and black eye is all the more poignant for his mother's dismissal of his fears, and for Alma's avoidance of Jackson for fear that her husband will carry out his threat to attack the boy as well. The humor, which never belittles Alma's troubles, is sometimes slipped in as anecdotes about Jackson's pal Goat or his incorrigible cutup father. Sometimes the funny scenes are more central, as when an anxious Jackson and an excited Goat, 11-year-olds sitting on pillows for height, manage to drive Jackson's mother's car to take Alma to a battered-wives' shelter in a nearby town. That time, Alma changes her mind en route; but later, when she and the baby are both hurt badly, Jackson's mother steps in and gets her to the shelter. A plot outline of Cracker Jackson might suggest a banal gloss on a trendy problem; but Byars gives Jackson's part in the drama an affecting cast of feeling—never deep or disturbing, but never goopy either, and always within an 11-year-old boy's emotional framework.
Pub Date: May 1, 1985
ISBN: 014031881X
Page Count: 158
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: April 18, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1985
An ode to the children of migrants who have been taken away.
A Mexican American boy takes on heavy responsibilities when his family is torn apart.
Mateo’s life is turned upside down the day U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents show up unsuccessfully seeking his Pa at his New York City bodega. The Garcias live in fear until the day both parents are picked up; his Pa is taken to jail and his Ma to a detention center. The adults around Mateo offer support to him and his 7-year-old sister, Sophie, however, he knows he is now responsible for caring for her and the bodega as well as trying to survive junior year—that is, if he wants to fulfill his dream to enter the drama program at the Tisch School of the Arts and become an actor. Mateo’s relationships with his friends Kimmie and Adam (a potential love interest) also suffer repercussions as he keeps his situation a secret. Kimmie is half Korean (her other half is unspecified) and Adam is Italian American; Mateo feels disconnected from them, less American, and with worries they can’t understand. He talks himself out of choosing a safer course of action, a decision that deepens the story. Mateo’s self-awareness and inner monologue at times make him seem older than 16, and, with significant turmoil in the main plot, some side elements feel underdeveloped. Aleman’s narrative joins the ranks of heart-wrenching stories of migrant families who have been separated.
An ode to the children of migrants who have been taken away. (Fiction. 14-18)Pub Date: May 4, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-7595-5605-8
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 22, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Riveting, brutal and beautifully told.
A devastating tale of greed and secrets springs from the summer that tore Cady’s life apart.
Cady Sinclair’s family uses its inherited wealth to ensure that each successive generation is blond, beautiful and powerful. Reunited each summer by the family patriarch on his private island, his three adult daughters and various grandchildren lead charmed, fairy-tale lives (an idea reinforced by the periodic inclusions of Cady’s reworkings of fairy tales to tell the Sinclair family story). But this is no sanitized, modern Disney fairy tale; this is Cinderella with her stepsisters’ slashed heels in bloody glass slippers. Cady’s fairy-tale retellings are dark, as is the personal tragedy that has led to her examination of the skeletons in the Sinclair castle’s closets; its rent turns out to be extracted in personal sacrifices. Brilliantly, Lockhart resists simply crucifying the Sinclairs, which might make the family’s foreshadowed tragedy predictable or even satisfying. Instead, she humanizes them (and their painful contradictions) by including nostalgic images that showcase the love shared among Cady, her two cousins closest in age, and Gat, the Heathcliff-esque figure she has always loved. Though increasingly disenchanted with the Sinclair legacy of self-absorption, the four believe family redemption is possible—if they have the courage to act. Their sincere hopes and foolish naïveté make the teens’ desperate, grand gesture all that much more tragic.
Riveting, brutal and beautifully told. (Fiction. 14 & up)Pub Date: May 13, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-385-74126-2
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: March 16, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2014
PROFILES
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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