After her best friend moves away, sixth-grader Lee Bloom meets some neighborhood children whose imaginative games fighting pirates in the attic of their home capture her imagination. It is 1960 and Lee attends the local public school while her new best friend, Polly Burke, goes to parochial school. Her new friend’s Catholicism presents problems for Lee on more than one front. Lee is Jewish and her mother, who came to Poland as a girl but whose parents perished in the Holocaust, distrusts all non-Jews. Her fears about permitting Lee to play at Polly’s house are partly justified when Polly’s mother leaves religious tracts in Lee’s books urging her to be saved before it is too late. Disturbed as she is by the prediction that she will go to hell, Lee refuses to blame Polly for the actions and attitudes of Polly’s mother. Nevertheless, Lee cannot disobey her own mother, who has forbidden her to play with Polly. Meanwhile, a school project about George Washington Carver makes Lee increasingly aware of the existence of prejudice and intolerance, which, as she observes from the behavior of the adults around her, has not yet disappeared. Lee herself slips when, in anger, she insults the African-American super of her apartment building who has befriended Lee’s nemesis, Eddie. Everyone is reconciled in a satisfying conclusion, except perhaps the unrepentant Mrs. Burke. The fantasy game involving pirates and Peter Pan that so engages Lee and her friends may strike readers of a comparable age as childish, but Shalant (Bartelby of the Mighty Mississippi, 2000, etc.) tells a good story that emphasizes the relationships among the characters rather than the religious or political issues. (Fiction. 8-11)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-525-46920-6
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2002
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Though it lacks nuance, still a must-read.
Tyler is the son of generations of Vermont dairy farmers.
Mari is the Mexican-born daughter of undocumented migrant laborers whose mother has vanished in a perilous border crossing. When Tyler’s father is disabled in an accident, the only way the family can afford to keep the farm is by hiring Mari’s family. As Tyler and Mari’s friendship grows, the normal tensions of middle-school boy-girl friendships are complicated by philosophical and political truths. Tyler wonders how he can be a patriot while his family breaks the law. Mari worries about her vanished mother and lives in fear that she will be separated from her American-born sisters if la migra comes. Unashamedly didactic, Alvarez’s novel effectively complicates simple equivalencies between what’s illegal and what’s wrong. Mari’s experience is harrowing, with implied atrocities and immigration raids, but equally full of good people doing the best they can. The two children find hope despite the unhappily realistic conclusions to their troubles, in a story which sees the best in humanity alongside grim realities.
Though it lacks nuance, still a must-read. (Fiction. 9-11)Pub Date: Jan. 13, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-375-85838-3
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2008
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Using the multiple voices that made Bull Run (1995) so absorbing, Fleischman takes readers to a modern inner-city neighborhood and a different sort of battle, as bit by bit the handful of lima beans an immigrant child plants in an empty lot blossoms into a community garden, tended by a notably diverse group of local residents. It's not an easy victory: Toughened by the experience of putting her children through public school, Leona spends several days relentlessly bulling her way into government offices to get the lot's trash hauled away; others address the lack of readily available water, as well as problems with vandals and midnight dumpers; and though decades of waging peace on a small scale have made Sam an expert diplomat, he's unable to prevent racial and ethnic borders from forming. Still, the garden becomes a place where wounds heal, friendships form, and seeds of change are sown. Readers won't gain any great appreciation for the art and science of gardening from this, but they may come away understanding that people can work side by side despite vastly different motives, attitudes, skills, and cultural backgrounds. It's a worthy idea, accompanied by Pedersen's chapter-heading black-and-white portraits, providing advance information about the participants' races and, here and there, ages. (Fiction. 9-11)
Pub Date: May 11, 1997
ISBN: 0-06-027471-9
Page Count: 69
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1997
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