A high-school student with a passion for selling shoes may be a hard sell to teenagers, but Bauer (Sticks, 1996, etc.) makes 16-year-old, too-tall Jenna Boller a convincing narrator in this story of love and loss in the shoe business. President and owner of shoe stores from Chicago to Texas, the elderly Mrs. Gladstone appoints Jenna, who works in one of the stores, her personal driver. As the Chicago skyline recedes, Jenna and her companion head for the Lone Star state and a stockholders' meeting, taking in shoe stores from Peoria to Little Rock, where Mrs. Gladstone uncovers not only a decline in the quality of shoes being sold, but her son's plot for a company takeover. Sharp dialogue and caustic commentary from Jenna mark the journey, which lags somewhere around Kansas; revitalizing the plot is the entrance of Harry Bender, world's greatest shoe salesman. Through him and others, Jenna learns much more than the rules of the road ("Never eat at a place called MOM'S, because it's a safe bet Mom's been dead for years'') and business acumen. Jenna's alcoholic father hovers in the background, more plot manipulation than fully realized character, but his presence throws Jenna's new maturity into relief. It's an unlikely hero's journey, and Bauer's dry humor assures readers that all's well that ends wellif not in corporate takeovers, at least in the business of growing up. (Fiction. 12-15)
Pub Date: April 13, 1998
ISBN: 0-399-23140-4
Page Count: 201
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1998
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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