This ersatz diary, in the Dear America series, belongs to Molly MacKenzie Flaherty, a 15-year-old Boston high-school student during the Vietnam War. Molly’s brother Patrick (The Journal of Patrick Seamus Flaherty, p. 744) has volunteered to serve in the Marines and the family finds itself in the center of the morass that marked the war: nightly death totals, growing anti-war feelings, deaths of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, and the frustrating doublespeak of politicians. Molly’s large Catholic family lives in Brighton, where a number of her male relatives are firefighters. The heroism of the soldiers is juxtaposed with the heroism of her relatives as they fight fires in the city, even a fire started by rioters following the death of Martin Luther King. The four-and-a-half months that Molly chronicles are unbelievably busy ones. Molly attends her first high-school parties, watches the silly sitcoms that blare from all those new color televisions, meets peace protesters in Harvard Square, nurses her father back to health after one more terrible evening of firefighting, reads the surprising book her mother has given her (The Feminine Mystique), finds a volunteer job at the VA hospital working with amputees fresh from Vietnam, waits for news of Patrick following his injury, and eventually helps him return to civilian life. This is more like a vehicle for the author’s research than a diary. Readers of this popular series might not mind the pure volume of historical details, amazing coincidences, and overblown writing style, but they will certainly question the supposed age of the writer. However, very few stories of stateside siblings of soldiers exist and this might inspire some readers to think about life at home during the Vietnam War. A lengthy historical note with photographs follows the fictional diary. (Fiction. 10-14)
Pub Date: June 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-439-14889-8
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2002
Poignant, respectful, and historically accurate while pulsating with emotional turmoil, adventure, and suspense.
In the midst of political turmoil, how do you escape the only country that you’ve ever known and navigate a new life? Parallel stories of three different middle school–aged refugees—Josef from Nazi Germany in 1938, Isabel from 1994 Cuba, and Mahmoud from 2015 Aleppo—eventually intertwine for maximum impact.
Three countries, three time periods, three brave protagonists. Yet these three refugee odysseys have so much in common. Each traverses a landscape ruled by a dictator and must balance freedom, family, and responsibility. Each initially leaves by boat, struggles between visibility and invisibility, copes with repeated obstacles and heart-wrenching loss, and gains resilience in the process. Each third-person narrative offers an accessible look at migration under duress, in which the behavior of familiar adults changes unpredictably, strangers exploit the vulnerabilities of transients, and circumstances seem driven by random luck. Mahmoud eventually concludes that visibility is best: “See us….Hear us. Help us.” With this book, Gratz accomplishes a feat that is nothing short of brilliant, offering a skillfully wrought narrative laced with global and intergenerational reverberations that signal hope for the future. Excellent for older middle grade and above in classrooms, book groups, and/or communities looking to increase empathy for new and existing arrivals from afar.
Poignant, respectful, and historically accurate while pulsating with emotional turmoil, adventure, and suspense. (maps, author’s note) (Historical fiction. 10-14)Pub Date: July 25, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-545-88083-1
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: May 9, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2017
PROFILES
Compulsively readable; morally uncomfortable.
Six New Jersey 12-year-olds separated by decades race to ensure the “good guys” win World War II in this middle-grade work by the author of The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants and her brother, a children's author and journalist.
It all starts with a ham radio that Alice, Lawrence, and Artie fool around with in 1944 and Henry, Frances, and Lukas find in 2023. It’s late April, and the 1944 kids worry about loved ones in combat, while the 2023 kids study the war in school. When, impossibly, the radio allows the kids to communicate across time, it doesn’t take long before they share information that changes history. Can the two sets of kids work across a 79-year divide to prevent the U.S.A. from becoming the Nazi-controlled dystopia of Westfallen? This propulsive thriller includes well-paced cuts between times that keep the pages turning. Like most people in their small New Jersey town, Alice, Artie, and Frances are white. In 1944, Lawrence, who’s Black, endures bigotry; in the U.S.A. of 2023, Henry’s biracial (white and Black) identity and Lukas’ Jewish one are unremarkable, but in Westfallen, Henry’s a “mischling” doing “work-learning,” and Lukas is a menial laborer. Alice’s and Henry’s dual first-person narration zooms in on the adventure, but readers who pull back may find themselves deeply uneasy with the summary consideration paid to the real-life fates of European Jews and disabled people. The cliffhanger ending will have them hoping for more thoughtful treatment in sequels to come.
Compulsively readable; morally uncomfortable. (Science fiction/thriller. 10-13)Pub Date: Sept. 17, 2024
ISBN: 9781665950817
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: June 15, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2024
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