Combining the timeless allure of action and young-love romance with the historically accurate and turbulent life of the...
Late Renaissance Italy comes to life in this upper-middle-grade novel featuring the painter Caravaggio and a young friend.
Fifteen-year-old Beppo, sold two years earlier into indentured servitude by his debt-ridden stepfather to an unsavory wine merchant, doesn’t think he can get any more miserable. But then the wine merchant is murdered, and Beppo is wrongly accused. He runs away and, searching for a safe place to hide, stumbles into a brawl between the famous (and famously temperamental) painter Caravaggio and the man who actually committed the murder. Beppo and the wounded Caravaggio flee together and, as the story’s adventures continue, form a strong friendship. While Beppo is a fictitious character, Caravaggio is not. Narrated by Beppo, the story stays true to what is known about Caravaggio’s tumultuous life (with a few details chronologically reordered, a license addressed in the appended historical note). Rich and copious details of early-17th-century Italian life—how medicinal herbs are used, how paint pigments are mixed and canvases stretched, how to fight with a sword, and Caravaggio’s (purported) use of the camera obscura to paint his distinctive paintings, among many others—give great depth and validity to the narrative. Beppo’s happy-ending romantic storyline adds additional appeal.
Combining the timeless allure of action and young-love romance with the historically accurate and turbulent life of the painter Caravaggio, this story succeeds on all levels. (Historical fiction. 12-15)Pub Date: April 15, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-896580-05-0
Page Count: 152
Publisher: Tradewind Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
Characters to love, quips to snort at, insights to ponder: typical Spinelli.
For two teenagers, a small town’s annual cautionary ritual becomes both a life- and a death-changing experience.
On the second Wednesday in June, every eighth grader in Amber Springs, Pennsylvania, gets a black shirt, the name and picture of a teen killed the previous year through reckless behavior—and the silent treatment from everyone in town. Like many of his classmates, shy, self-conscious Robbie “Worm” Tarnauer has been looking forward to Dead Wed as a day for cutting loose rather than sober reflection…until he finds himself talking to a strange girl or, as she would have it, “spectral maiden,” only he can see or touch. Becca Finch is as surprised and confused as Worm, only remembering losing control of her car on an icy slope that past Christmas Eve. But being (or having been, anyway) a more outgoing sort, she sees their encounter as a sign that she’s got a mission. What follows, in a long conversational ramble through town and beyond, is a day at once ordinary yet rich in discovery and self-discovery—not just for Worm, but for Becca too, with a climactic twist that leaves both ready, or readier, for whatever may come next. Spinelli shines at setting a tongue-in-cheek tone for a tale with serious underpinnings, and as in Stargirl (2000), readers will be swept into the relationship that develops between this adolescent odd couple. Characters follow a White default.
Characters to love, quips to snort at, insights to ponder: typical Spinelli. (Fiction. 12-15)Pub Date: Aug. 3, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-593-30667-3
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 31, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2021
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