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NO STOPPING US NOW

The cause is just, the action absorbing, the sexist flack still all too familiar.

A teenager faces stiff opposition in her campaign to bring girls’ basketball to her school in this novel closely based on Bledsoe’s experiences.

It’s 1974, and the best 17-year-old Louisa and four female classmates can do to satisfy their strong desire to play is early morning access to their Portland, Oregon, school’s gym for inexpert scrimmages. Until, that is, Louisa meets Gloria Steinem at a local public event, learns about the recently passed Title IX, and touches off a storm with a letter to her state newspaper protesting the lack of a girls’ sports program in the public schools. Change does come, but it comes hard, with bullying and even a teacher’s physical intimidation to go with a falsified school board meeting transcript, oblique threats to her college plans, foot-dragging pleas for patience from her principal, and new coaches who are incompetent or outright hostile. But support, sometimes from unexpected quarters, not only keeps Louisa motivated, but turns her and a wave of new recruits into a team solid enough to compete for the state championship. Filling in her triumphant tale with expert hoops coaching as well as a period pop-music soundtrack and a flurry of subplots, Bledsoe states in her author’s note that most everything—excepting dialogue and some names—is true. The cast is largely White.

The cause is just, the action absorbing, the sexist flack still all too familiar. (Fictionalized memoir. 14-18)

Pub Date: April 26, 2022

ISBN: 978-1-953103-20-8

Page Count: 288

Publisher: Three Rooms Press

Review Posted Online: Jan. 25, 2022

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2022

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INDIVISIBLE

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

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WE WERE LIARS

From the We Were Liars series

Riveting, brutal and beautifully told.

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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

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