The exodus of the Jews is breaking Dani’s heart: the exodus from Buenos Aires, that is. The 2001 Argentinian currency crisis has destroyed Buenos Aires’s economy, and all of Dani’s friends are moving to Israel or the United States. Dani’s own family, devastated by poverty and her father’s overwhelming depression, is headed to New York. There, in a wealthy suburb, Dani struggles to make friends in a huge, English-speaking public high school. Dani’s high-school problems follow a checklist of issues: autistic friend, mean popular girl, long-distance boyfriend hiding his new romance. The supporting characters act mostly as set dressing—from the bully who vanishes as soon as he has provoked another character’s redemption to the friend from ESL class who has no nationality or history of her own—and the comforting solutions are too pat. Enjoyable enough, so keep this on the shelf to fight misconceptions about terrorism, poverty, immigration and Jews—but don’t expect readers to come begging for more. (Historical fiction. 11-13)
Pub Date: July 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-545-15144-3
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: May 31, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2010
Raisa's sister, Henda, has earned enough money to send for Raisa to join her in the goldineh medina of America. When Raisa arrives in 1910 New York from her Polish shtetl, she finds Henda missing. Responsible for supporting both herself and a newly orphaned toddler, Raisa finds a job at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory. Raisa's friends, described in language rich with the cadences of Yiddish, each have jealousies, loves and flaws; they're not mere trajectories toward tragedy. But tragedy does strike, with the real-life factory fire that killed 146 workers. Vivid description of the deaths—of workers trapped on higher floors or leaping from windows to choose a faster death—unavoidably invites comparisons with another, more recent tragedy. The comparison serves the novel well; when the prose isn't strong enough for sufficient horror, visceral memories of 9/11 will do the trick (at least for those readers old enough to remember). After some tear-jerking, the happy conclusion comes too suddenly—shockingly so. The journey, however, is satisfying enough on its own. (Historical fiction. 11-13)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-670-01245-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Sept. 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2010
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
In a noir caper with racial overtones, the Big Bad Wolf’s son escapes from juvie and uncovers an ugly corporate plot to corner the fairy-dust market. With all the fairies suddenly gone from the floating city of Eden, the only magic left to the evolved wolves, dwarves, goblins, cats, elves and foxes in the earthbound city below comes in adulterated form from the dust mines of human-owned Nimbus Thaumaturgical (“Better Living Through Enchantment”) or illegally through the nixie mob. Determined to find out what really happened to the fairies, Henry Whelp becomes a nixiedust runner and discovers horrors both below ground and in the aerial realm—capped by the revelation of a genocidal scheme to develop a bad dust that will cause all of the “animalia” species to revert to their bestial originals. There's only a glimmer of hope that some fairies survive, but with plenty of help from an attractive lupine photojournalist and a sack of very special beans passed on by a human thief named Jack, Henry takes on the foes of multispecies amity. Weston deftly tucks his fairy-tale tropes into this thought-provoking mystery. (Fantasy/mystery. 11-13)
Pub Date: Nov. 25, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-59514-296-2
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Razorbill/Penguin
Review Posted Online: Dec. 23, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2010
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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