A hopeful and entertaining exploration of a difficult era.
A group of young people in South Korea in 1985 come together for a traditional holiday and learn they have more in common than they knew.
College student Taehee isn’t getting along with her dad. She isn’t allowed to date; he barely even trusts her with her friends. Still, she manages to have a secret boyfriend, Kiwoo, who’s very supportive—even when she brings up the idea of tricking the members of their masked folk dance team into participating in her grandmother’s eerie Daeboreum full-moon holiday ceremony. Taehee’s mom forces her to take part in the old tradition, which involves spending the night at Halmoni’s “haunted persimmon farm”—and facing some sort of sacrifice. The setting is rich and immersive; against a backdrop of everyday interpersonal angst and misunderstandings, the story covers political events, such as protests against the book-banning military dictatorship. One team member’s father deems the dance club insufficiently manly, there’s a shaman exorcism, and a transracial Korean American adoptee experiences cultural clashes. Daeboreum becomes more than just a tradition about scaring away evil spirits that Taehee’s grandmother and her friends pull the young people into—it’s also a time for found family to persevere and confront past horrors. The colorful, cartoonlike illustration style is attractive but at times feels dissonant with the story’s themes and doesn’t quite do justice to the strengths of this touching book.
A hopeful and entertaining exploration of a difficult era. (creators’ note, sketches) (Graphic fiction. 14-18)Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2025
ISBN: 9780593521328
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Penguin Workshop
Review Posted Online: June 13, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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