Touching.
“Amahirwe aza rimwe,” or “chance comes once,” in this story of 9-year-old Rebeka’s brave journey from Rwanda to the United States for a life-changing surgery.
Rebeka Uwitonze, raised in Bugesera, Rwanda, was born with arthrogryposis, which caused her joints to contract, resulting in curled and twisted feet. With the support of her little sister Medea, she eventually walks on the tops of her feet, but it will soon become impossible to continue upright without further intervention. Fortunately, what began simply as a school sponsorship turns into the chance of a lifetime: Co-author Davis and her husband of Austin, Texas, will host Rebeka so she can receive surgery that will enable her to walk for the rest of her life. Yet this means that Rebeka must leave her family and the country she knows for a world and language that are totally different. She writes home to Medea and keeps a small blue handkerchief stitched with her mother’s love in her home language, Kinyarwanda: “Protect me from grief. I will be your pride.” When Rebeka finally returns home after 58 hospital visits and 31 different casts, she’s able to share her new experiences and spread the bravery to her peers to confront any and all life challenges. The story is related in a tightly focused third person and incorporates substantial dialogue; Davis describes the process in concluding notes. Snapshots of Rebeka both at home and with her white host family help to document her journey.
Touching. (Biography. 8-12)Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-338-35637-3
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Scholastic Focus
Review Posted Online: July 23, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
With young readers diagnosed with anxiety in ever increasing numbers, this book offers a necessary mirror to many.
Young Raina is 9 when she throws up for the first time that she remembers, due to a stomach bug. Even a year later, when she is in fifth grade, she fears getting sick.
Raina begins having regular stomachaches that keep her home from school. She worries about sharing food with her friends and eating certain kinds of foods, afraid of getting sick or food poisoning. Raina’s mother enrolls her in therapy. At first Raina isn’t sure about seeing a therapist, but over time she develops healthy coping mechanisms to deal with her stress and anxiety. Her therapist helps her learn to ground herself and relax, and in turn she teaches her classmates for a school project. Amping up the green, wavy lines to evoke Raina’s nausea, Telgemeier brilliantly produces extremely accurate visual representations of stress and anxiety. Thought bubbles surround Raina in some panels, crowding her with anxious “what if”s, while in others her negative self-talk appears to be literally crushing her. Even as she copes with anxiety disorder and what is eventually diagnosed as mild irritable bowel syndrome, she experiences the typical stresses of school life, going from cheer to panic in the blink of an eye. Raina is white, and her classmates are diverse; one best friend is Korean American.
With young readers diagnosed with anxiety in ever increasing numbers, this book offers a necessary mirror to many. (Graphic memoir. 8-12)Pub Date: Sept. 17, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-545-85251-7
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Graphix/Scholastic
Review Posted Online: May 11, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2019
A celebration of progressive Judaism and an inclusive primer on Jews making a difference in the world.
This wide-ranging collection of short biographies highlights 36 Jewish figures from around the globe and across centuries.
Explicitly pushing back against homogenous depictions of Jewish people, the authors demonstrate the ethnic, racial, and gender diversity of Jews. Each spread includes a brief biography paired with a stylized portrait reminiscent of those in Elena Favilli and Francesca Cavallo’s Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls (2016). A pull quote or sidebar accompanies each subject; sidebars include “Highlighting Jewish Paralympic Athletes,” “Jewish Stringed Music,” and “Ethiopian Jews in Israel.” Kleinrock and Pritchard’s roster of subjects makes a compelling case for the vastness and variety of Jewish experience—from a contemporary Ethiopian American teen to a 16th-century Portuguese philanthropist—while still allowing them to acknowledge better-known figures. The entry on Raquel Montoya-Lewis, an associate justice of the Washington Supreme Court and an enrolled member of the Pueblo Isleta Indian tribe, discusses her mission to reimagine criminal justice for Indigenous people; the sidebar name-checks Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Elena Kagan. The bios are organized around themes of Jewish principles such as Pikuach Nefesh (translated from the Hebrew as “to save a life”) and Adam Yachid (translated as the “unique value of every person”); each section includes an introduction to an organization that centers diverse Jewish experiences.
A celebration of progressive Judaism and an inclusive primer on Jews making a difference in the world. (resources) (Nonfiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Sept. 24, 2024
ISBN: 9780063285712
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 15, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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