The dawdling pace and obvious, militaristic similes combine to undercut its top-notch research and compelling premise for a...
The tone is as welcoming as warm honey over corn bread. Ah, if only a coming-of-age novel could live by bread alone.
Pearsall, 2003 winner of the Scott O'Dell Award for historical fiction with Trouble Don't Last, presents the excellently researched tale of the 555th Parachute Infantry Battalion, little known all-black paratroopers serving during WWII. Her tale of 13-year-old Levi Battle’s struggle to find his place in the world during World War II should be the kind of book teachers handpick for their students, especially reluctant-to-read males. However, if this effusive, lengthy story is bread and honey, the flavor, drowned in similes, metaphors and foreshadowing, gets diminished by too much “writing.” Strip away the excess, and you’ve got the tender story of a displaced boy hungry to connect with the war-hero father who is more legend than parent. Dumped at his Aunt Odella’s because his father is at war and his mama has run off, Levi is stunned to learn his aunt is packing him off to his father at a base in North Carolina. The Chicago boy is plunged into the racist South, with its separate drinking fountains and oppression that hangs like humidity.
The dawdling pace and obvious, militaristic similes combine to undercut its top-notch research and compelling premise for a disappointing conclusion. (Historical fiction. 10-14)Pub Date: Aug. 14, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-375-83699-2
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: June 12, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2012
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
Riveting, inspiring, and sometimes hilarious.
If you made a recording to be heard by the aliens who found the iPod, what would you record?
For 11-year-old Alex Petroski, it's easy. He records everything. He records the story of how he travels to New Mexico to a rocket festival with his dog, Carl Sagan, and his rocket. He records finding out that a man with the same name and birthday as his dead father has an address in Las Vegas. He records eating at Johnny Rockets for the first time with his new friends, who are giving him a ride to find his dead father (who might not be dead!), and losing Carl Sagan in the wilds of Las Vegas, and discovering he has a half sister. He even records his own awful accident. Cheng delivers a sweet, soulful debut novel with a brilliant, refreshing structure. His characters manage to come alive through the “transcript” of Alex’s iPod recording, an odd medium that sounds like it would be confusing but really works. Taking inspiration from the Voyager Golden Record released to space in 1977, Alex, who explains he has “light brown skin,” records all the important moments of a journey that takes him from a family of two to a family of plenty.
Riveting, inspiring, and sometimes hilarious. (Fiction. 10-14)Pub Date: Feb. 28, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-399-18637-0
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: Oct. 18, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
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