Nineteenth-century servant girl Bet follows the classic cross-dressing adventure, disguising herself as a boy so she can attend school in a tale more Yentl than Mulan. Will is a 16-year-old upper-crust rapscallion, and Bet is the servant and companion who’s been raised side-by-side with him all her life. Will has been expelled from yet one more school when Bet proposes her cunning plan: Bet will take Will’s place, and Will can enter the military as he’s always dreamed. The plan goes off without a hitch. It’s too bad that Will’s current school, the Betterman Academy, is a dreadful place reserved for unredeemable boys. Luckily for Bet, her roommate, James, is a darling. This slim volume steps through all the required moments in the girl-disguised-as-a-boy genre, though one hopes the predictable moments of gay panic and safely heterosexual resolution will ring false to modern readers. This brief historical, solidly 20th century in feel, offers a perfectly pleasant romantic interlude for readers looking for bookish but light fare. (Historical fiction. 11-13)
Pub Date: July 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-547-22308-7
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: June 2, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2010
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Raisa's sister, Henda, has earned enough money to send for Raisa to join her in the goldineh medina of America. When Raisa arrives in 1910 New York from her Polish shtetl, she finds Henda missing. Responsible for supporting both herself and a newly orphaned toddler, Raisa finds a job at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory. Raisa's friends, described in language rich with the cadences of Yiddish, each have jealousies, loves and flaws; they're not mere trajectories toward tragedy. But tragedy does strike, with the real-life factory fire that killed 146 workers. Vivid description of the deaths—of workers trapped on higher floors or leaping from windows to choose a faster death—unavoidably invites comparisons with another, more recent tragedy. The comparison serves the novel well; when the prose isn't strong enough for sufficient horror, visceral memories of 9/11 will do the trick (at least for those readers old enough to remember). After some tear-jerking, the happy conclusion comes too suddenly—shockingly so. The journey, however, is satisfying enough on its own. (Historical fiction. 11-13)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-670-01245-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Sept. 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2010
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
This suspenseful tale of two young women on their own in modern Afghanistan makes riveting reading. Having spent most of her 14 years in England, bookish Yasmine chafes at the restrictions forced on her when her idealistic, university-educated parents bring her to a secluded village. Though Yasmine does meet Tamanna, a friendly young neighbor, she is confined to the house and, until Taliban ruffians arrive to shut it down, a newly built school. Then both of Yasmine’s parents are shot in a drive-by and evacuated to Kandahar, leaving her—and Tamanna, whose brutal uncle has tried and failed to sell her into marriage—in serious danger. They resolve on a desperate stratagem, slipping away not toward Kandahar as their pursuers would expect, but cross country to the Pakistan border. Well stocked with credible cultural detail and enhanced by black-and-white chapter-head photos, their high-tension odyssey leads to a violent climax and an aftermath marked by surprising twists. Readers will be caught up—though it's so misanthropic that many will wonder how anyone, especially women, could tolerate living in that country. (glossary, timeline) (Fiction. 11-13)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-55451-267-6
Page Count: 264
Publisher: Annick Press
Review Posted Online: Oct. 1, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2010
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