A thoughtful portrait of friendship across class lines in modern Pakistan.
When 11-year-old Houston native Mimi Scotts lands with her mother in Karachi, Pakistan, for summer vacation, she’s not sure what to expect—especially from her Pakistani grandparents, whom she is meeting for the first time.
Mimi’s mother grows increasingly distracted and distant as she navigates the fallout of her failed marriage to Mimi’s White father. Mimi grounds herself by writing to her estranged father in her journal. Although most servants in Mimi’s grandparents’ enormous house are excited about the American arrivals, Sakina Ejaz, a girl Mimi’s age who works as an assistant to her head cook father, couldn’t care less. Between her family’s poverty and her father’s diabetes, she has enough to worry about. But when Mimi agrees to help Sakina pass an English exam to achieve her dream of earning a scholarship and attending school for the first time, the two strike up a friendship greater than the differences in class and nationality that divide them. Together, they weather Mimi’s family secrets, Sakina’s pursuit of her dreams, and the sometimes-violent lead-up to an upcoming election. Faruqi’s descriptions of modern Karachi are rich with sensory detail, and her exploration of Mimi’s complicated feelings about her father make for a beautifully layered character arc. Sakina, however, feels defined almost entirely by her poverty, flattening her story and making her character’s development less satisfying.
A thoughtful portrait of friendship across class lines in modern Pakistan. (Fiction. 9-14)Pub Date: Oct. 6, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-06-294320-0
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Quill Tree Books/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An endearing protagonist runs the first, fast leg of Reynolds' promising relay.
Castle “Ghost” Cranshaw feels like he’s been running ever since his dad pulled that gun on him and his mom—and used it.
His dad’s been in jail three years now, but Ghost still feels the trauma, which is probably at the root of the many “altercations” he gets into at middle school. When he inserts himself into a practice for a local elite track team, the Defenders, he’s fast enough that the hard-as-nails coach decides to put him on the team. Ghost is surprised to find himself caring enough about being on the team that he curbs his behavior to avoid “altercations.” But Ma doesn’t have money to spare on things like fancy running shoes, so Ghost shoplifts a pair that make his feet feel impossibly light—and his conscience correspondingly heavy. Ghost’s narration is candid and colloquial, reminiscent of such original voices as Bud Caldwell and Joey Pigza; his level of self-understanding is both believably childlike and disarming in its perception. He is self-focused enough that secondary characters initially feel one-dimensional, Coach in particular, but as he gets to know them better, so do readers, in a way that unfolds naturally and pleasingly. His three fellow “newbies” on the Defenders await their turns to star in subsequent series outings. Characters are black by default; those few white people in Ghost’s world are described as such.
An endearing protagonist runs the first, fast leg of Reynolds' promising relay. (Fiction. 10-14)Pub Date: Aug. 30, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4814-5015-7
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Caitlyn Dlouhy/Atheneum
Review Posted Online: July 19, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
Rich and strange (and kitted out with an eye-catching cover), but stronger in the set pieces than the internal logic.
Chainani works an elaborate sea change akin to Gregory Maguire’s Wicked (1995), though he leaves the waters muddied.
Every four years, two children, one regarded as particularly nice and the other particularly nasty, are snatched from the village of Gavaldon by the shadowy School Master to attend the divided titular school. Those who survive to graduate become major or minor characters in fairy tales. When it happens to sweet, Disney princess–like Sophie and her friend Agatha, plain of features, sour of disposition and low of self-esteem, they are both horrified to discover that they’ve been dropped not where they expect but at Evil and at Good respectively. Gradually—too gradually, as the author strings out hundreds of pages of Hogwarts-style pranks, classroom mishaps and competitions both academic and romantic—it becomes clear that the placement wasn’t a mistake at all. Growing into their true natures amid revelations and marked physical changes, the two spark escalating rivalry between the wings of the school. This leads up to a vicious climactic fight that sees Good and Evil repeatedly switching sides. At this point, readers are likely to feel suddenly left behind, as, thanks to summary deus ex machina resolutions, everything turns out swell(ish).
Rich and strange (and kitted out with an eye-catching cover), but stronger in the set pieces than the internal logic. (Fantasy. 11-13)Pub Date: May 14, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-06-210489-2
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Feb. 12, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2013
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BOOK TO SCREEN
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