Inspiring and hopeful; young love and the call to action resonate.
Romance blooms against a backdrop of adversity and environmental conservation efforts.
It’s 2018, and Soleida, a 16-year-old Cuban girl, lives with her artist parents, who create sculptures protesting government laws that criminalize some forms of artistic expression. When a climate change–fueled hurricane destroys their home and exposes the art in their garden to authorities, her parents are arrested, and Soleida must flee, seeking asylum. Cuban American Dariel, also 16, has traveled to Costa Rica with his Abuelo to help him write the story of los caminantes, Cuban migrants fleeing oppression who have been stranded at the border with Nicaragua, unable to continue their journeys. Dariel comes from a wealthy celebrity family in California and has been affected by climate change in the form of dangerous wildfires that destroyed his home. When the two teens first meet in a refugee camp in the Costa Rican jungle, Soleida is traumatized by her journey, and Dariel is unable to connect with her. But slowly they begin a relationship centered on a mutual reverence for nature and a proclivity for the arts—Soleida is a painter, and Dariel is a musician. Chapters with alternating perspectives move the story forward briskly. Luscious verse and beautiful descriptions of the flora and fauna bring attention to the impacts of the climate crisis and the urgent need for change.
Inspiring and hopeful; young love and the call to action resonate. (author’s note) (Verse novel. 12-17)Pub Date: April 18, 2023
ISBN: 9781665926362
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Atheneum
Review Posted Online: Jan. 24, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2023
PERSPECTIVES
Refreshing and moving: avoids easy answers and saviors from the outside.
From Sudan to Maine, in free verse.
It's 1999 in Juba, and the second Sudanese civil war is in full swing. Viola is a Bari girl, and she lives every day in fear of the government soldiers occupying her town. In brief free-verse chapters, Viola makes Juba real: the dusty soil, the memories of sweetened condensed milk, the afternoons Viola spends braiding her cousin's hair. But there is more to Juba than family and hunger; there are the soldiers, and the danger, and the horrifying interactions with soldiers that Viola doesn't describe but only lets the reader infer. As soon as possible, Viola's mother takes the family to Cairo and then to Portland, Maine—but they won't all make it. First one and then another family member is brought down by the devastating war and famine. After such a journey, the culture shock in Portland is unsurprisingly overwhelming. "Portland to New York: 234 miles, / New York to Cairo: 5,621 miles, / Cairo to Juba: 1,730 miles." Viola tries to become an American girl, with some help from her Sudanese friends, a nice American boy and the requisite excellent teacher. But her mother, like the rest of the Sudanese elders, wants to run her home as if she were back in Juba, and the inevitable conflict is heartbreaking.
Refreshing and moving: avoids easy answers and saviors from the outside. (historical note) (Fiction. 13-15)Pub Date: May 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-7614-6267-5
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Marshall Cavendish
Review Posted Online: May 1, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2012
A memorable / and innovative story / of one wrenching year.
Seventeen-year-old Ashe Douglas records the events of 1968 in a novel in haiku.
Ashe was born on May 17, 1951, and is a senior in high school during the year he decides to describe in haiku, liking the tidiness of the three-line, 17-syllable form. The year is 1968, when more soldiers died in the Vietnam War than in any other year. Ashe decides not only to write haiku, but to dedicate a syllable to each soldier killed—976 haiku equals 16,592 syllables equals the number of soldiers killed in 1968. An entire story “contained by a syllable count.” Not only is that asking a lot of its diminutive form, but so much happened in 1968: the war, race riots, the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy, let alone Ashe’s family life, which resembles a war zone. Haiku stanzas just can’t contain it all, being ill equipped for the depth or context necessary for a rich historical novel. But what transcends contrivance and gimmickry is Ashe’s voice, and haiku are well-suited to carry that. With newspaper headlines, death tolls, and overwhelming world, national and domestic events in the background, one boy’s clear and earnest voice records his life: “I’ll / write what needs to be / remembered and leave it to / you to fill in the gaps.”
A memorable / and innovative story / of one wrenching year. (historical note, author’s note) (Historical fiction/poetry. 12-16)Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-544-30215-0
Page Count: 208
Publisher: HMH Books
Review Posted Online: July 15, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2014
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