A teenager discovers an unexpected talent and runs with it in this perceptive cautionary tale from Hautman (Mr. Was, 1996). Denn Doyle discovers a quicker way to raise the money for a used car than summer lawn work when an acquaintance invites him into a poker game. He wins, and keeps on winning, and soon he’s winning so much that he lets his friend Murky take over the mowing business completely. Armed with a fake ID, he becomes a fixture at the local casino, winning over $10,000 in one glorious 30-hour visit. Money has lost its glamour; Denn loves the game’s ebb and flow, and spotting the “tells,” or gestures, through which other players betray themselves. Although Hautman trots out some typecast teaching characters—the wise old card sharp, the sober but alcoholic Irish priest, and Murky, who becomes the worst sort of compulsive gambler—he also captures Denn’s calculated, almost inhuman concentration “in the zone,” and his profound satisfaction afterwards. In a climax that reads like the Big Game in an above-average sports novel, Denn returns to the table (against his parents’ wishes) to attempt to rescue Murky, and in a high-stakes confrontation with a professional gambler, makes an absolute killing. He ends up owning the town’s finest gourmet restaurant; still only 16, he waits in his office for the next game, the next hand. Readers will understand too well how empty his triumph is. (Fiction. 12-15)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-689-81759-2
Page Count: 163
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1998
At the end of the term, a new student who is black and Vietnamese finds a morsel of hope that she too will find a place in...
This is almost like a play for 18 voices, as Grimes (Stepping Out with Grandma Mac, not reviewed, etc.) moves her narration among a group of high school students in the Bronx.
The English teacher, Mr. Ward, accepts a set of poems from Wesley, his response to a month of reading poetry from the Harlem Renaissance. Soon there’s an open-mike poetry reading, sponsored by Mr. Ward, every month, and then later, every week. The chapters in the students’ voices alternate with the poems read by that student, defiant, shy, terrified. All of them, black, Latino, white, male, and female, talk about the unease and alienation endemic to their ages, and they do it in fresh and appealing voices. Among them: Janelle, who is tired of being called fat; Leslie, who finds friendship in another who has lost her mom; Diondra, who hides her art from her father; Tyrone, who has faith in words and in his “moms”; Devon, whose love for books and jazz gets jeers. Beyond those capsules are rich and complex teens, and their tentative reaching out to each other increases as through the poems they also find more of themselves. Steve writes: “But hey! Joy / is not a crime, though / some people / make it seem so.”
At the end of the term, a new student who is black and Vietnamese finds a morsel of hope that she too will find a place in the poetry. (Fiction. 12-15)Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-8037-2569-8
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2001
Certain to provoke controversy and difficult to see as a book for children, who could easily miss the painful point.
After Hitler appoints Bruno’s father commandant of Auschwitz, Bruno (nine) is unhappy with his new surroundings compared to the luxury of his home in Berlin.
The literal-minded Bruno, with amazingly little political and social awareness, never gains comprehension of the prisoners (all in “striped pajamas”) or the malignant nature of the death camp. He overcomes loneliness and isolation only when he discovers another boy, Shmuel, on the other side of the camp’s fence. For months, the two meet, becoming secret best friends even though they can never play together. Although Bruno’s family corrects him, he childishly calls the camp “Out-With” and the Fuhrer “Fury.” As a literary device, it could be said to be credibly rooted in Bruno’s consistent, guileless characterization, though it’s difficult to believe in reality. The tragic story’s point of view is unique: the corrosive effect of brutality on Nazi family life as seen through the eyes of a naïf. Some will believe that the fable form, in which the illogical may serve the objective of moral instruction, succeeds in Boyne’s narrative; others will believe it was the wrong choice.
Certain to provoke controversy and difficult to see as a book for children, who could easily miss the painful point. (Fiction. 12-14)Pub Date: Sept. 12, 2006
ISBN: 0-385-75106-0
Page Count: 224
Publisher: David Fickling/Random
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2006
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