No gold, for all the miles traveled and intriguing setting.
Hoping to save his family’s farm, 18-year-old Callum sets out on the long journey from Scotland to the Cariboo gold fields of British Columbia.
In a restrained narrative that requires patience from readers, Campbell sends his young prospector across the Atlantic to New York, around Cape Horn, and on up north to remote Williams Creek to join the 1860s gold rush. Callum travels through rugged terrain via steamboat, canoe, wagon, mule, foot, and (in a rare passage where the stiff tone temporarily unbends) even imported camel. Readers can, with difficulty, plot the last stage of his course on the book’s single, cramped map. A summer’s work and a few vague descriptions of gold-mining techniques later, he’s ready to start the equally arduous return journey with pockets full. But he’s barely set off when the author leaves him. Aside from one mention of a landscape stripped by miners, Callum rarely takes note of his natural surroundings, spoiled or otherwise, and the people he meets on his trek are barely even two-dimensional. Following the abrupt ending, a note on the area’s First Nations residents by university scholar Nicola Campbell, who is Nłeʔkepmx, Syilx (Interior Salish), and Métis, includes the tidbit that the gold rush drew workers from many parts of the world; that diversity is not reflected in the story itself.
No gold, for all the miles traveled and intriguing setting. (author’s note, note on terminology) (Historical fiction. 12-15)Pub Date: June 15, 2025
ISBN: 9781990598333
Page Count: 138
Publisher: Tradewind Books
Review Posted Online: May 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2025
Characters to love, quips to snort at, insights to ponder: typical Spinelli.
For two teenagers, a small town’s annual cautionary ritual becomes both a life- and a death-changing experience.
On the second Wednesday in June, every eighth grader in Amber Springs, Pennsylvania, gets a black shirt, the name and picture of a teen killed the previous year through reckless behavior—and the silent treatment from everyone in town. Like many of his classmates, shy, self-conscious Robbie “Worm” Tarnauer has been looking forward to Dead Wed as a day for cutting loose rather than sober reflection…until he finds himself talking to a strange girl or, as she would have it, “spectral maiden,” only he can see or touch. Becca Finch is as surprised and confused as Worm, only remembering losing control of her car on an icy slope that past Christmas Eve. But being (or having been, anyway) a more outgoing sort, she sees their encounter as a sign that she’s got a mission. What follows, in a long conversational ramble through town and beyond, is a day at once ordinary yet rich in discovery and self-discovery—not just for Worm, but for Becca too, with a climactic twist that leaves both ready, or readier, for whatever may come next. Spinelli shines at setting a tongue-in-cheek tone for a tale with serious underpinnings, and as in Stargirl (2000), readers will be swept into the relationship that develops between this adolescent odd couple. Characters follow a White default.
Characters to love, quips to snort at, insights to ponder: typical Spinelli. (Fiction. 12-15)Pub Date: Aug. 3, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-593-30667-3
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 31, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2021
Refreshing and moving: avoids easy answers and saviors from the outside.
From Sudan to Maine, in free verse.
It's 1999 in Juba, and the second Sudanese civil war is in full swing. Viola is a Bari girl, and she lives every day in fear of the government soldiers occupying her town. In brief free-verse chapters, Viola makes Juba real: the dusty soil, the memories of sweetened condensed milk, the afternoons Viola spends braiding her cousin's hair. But there is more to Juba than family and hunger; there are the soldiers, and the danger, and the horrifying interactions with soldiers that Viola doesn't describe but only lets the reader infer. As soon as possible, Viola's mother takes the family to Cairo and then to Portland, Maine—but they won't all make it. First one and then another family member is brought down by the devastating war and famine. After such a journey, the culture shock in Portland is unsurprisingly overwhelming. "Portland to New York: 234 miles, / New York to Cairo: 5,621 miles, / Cairo to Juba: 1,730 miles." Viola tries to become an American girl, with some help from her Sudanese friends, a nice American boy and the requisite excellent teacher. But her mother, like the rest of the Sudanese elders, wants to run her home as if she were back in Juba, and the inevitable conflict is heartbreaking.
Refreshing and moving: avoids easy answers and saviors from the outside. (historical note) (Fiction. 13-15)Pub Date: May 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-7614-6267-5
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Marshall Cavendish
Review Posted Online: May 1, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2012
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