A strikingly illustrated story of love and war.
A 17-year-old embarks on a bold quest to fulfil her dream of getting to know her mother.
Nimmi Campbell is struggling: She’s not confident about being accepted into Columbia’s journalism program, she’s an outsider in South Dakota, where her white American father moved them from Boston to be closer to Grandpa, and she’s wrestling with the idea of justice. The U.S. denied her Sri Lankan Tamil mother, who runs a UNICEF orphanage in Batticaloa, a visa, so she hasn’t seen Amma since she was a baby. When her journalist father finally gets a visa to return to Sri Lanka to cover the civil war, Nimmi, who has dual citizenship, sneaks off to join him. Her reunion with Amma is emotional, but Nimmi has mixed feelings about their long separation—and her mother unexpectedly feels like a stranger. It’s December 2004, and when the tsunami hits, the orphanage is devastated. This graphic novel’s most powerful pages are the wordless ones showing the tsunami and the wreckage and ruin it leaves behind. The characters’ human resilience and grit shine through beautifully in the straightforward text and fluid artwork executed in a muted palette. The book offers glimpses of the long-running conflict in Sri Lanka, its political and social history, the presence of international media, and the complexities of migration. Parenthood, found family, migration, and war are some of the themes that run through this poignant narrative.
A strikingly illustrated story of love and war. (author’s note) (Graphic fiction. 13-18)Pub Date: Aug. 12, 2025
ISBN: 9780063090163
Page Count: 256
Publisher: HarperAlley
Review Posted Online: May 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2025
PERSPECTIVES
An ode to the children of migrants who have been taken away.
A Mexican American boy takes on heavy responsibilities when his family is torn apart.
Mateo’s life is turned upside down the day U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents show up unsuccessfully seeking his Pa at his New York City bodega. The Garcias live in fear until the day both parents are picked up; his Pa is taken to jail and his Ma to a detention center. The adults around Mateo offer support to him and his 7-year-old sister, Sophie, however, he knows he is now responsible for caring for her and the bodega as well as trying to survive junior year—that is, if he wants to fulfill his dream to enter the drama program at the Tisch School of the Arts and become an actor. Mateo’s relationships with his friends Kimmie and Adam (a potential love interest) also suffer repercussions as he keeps his situation a secret. Kimmie is half Korean (her other half is unspecified) and Adam is Italian American; Mateo feels disconnected from them, less American, and with worries they can’t understand. He talks himself out of choosing a safer course of action, a decision that deepens the story. Mateo’s self-awareness and inner monologue at times make him seem older than 16, and, with significant turmoil in the main plot, some side elements feel underdeveloped. Aleman’s narrative joins the ranks of heart-wrenching stories of migrant families who have been separated.
An ode to the children of migrants who have been taken away. (Fiction. 14-18)Pub Date: May 4, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-7595-5605-8
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 22, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Riveting, brutal and beautifully told.
A devastating tale of greed and secrets springs from the summer that tore Cady’s life apart.
Cady Sinclair’s family uses its inherited wealth to ensure that each successive generation is blond, beautiful and powerful. Reunited each summer by the family patriarch on his private island, his three adult daughters and various grandchildren lead charmed, fairy-tale lives (an idea reinforced by the periodic inclusions of Cady’s reworkings of fairy tales to tell the Sinclair family story). But this is no sanitized, modern Disney fairy tale; this is Cinderella with her stepsisters’ slashed heels in bloody glass slippers. Cady’s fairy-tale retellings are dark, as is the personal tragedy that has led to her examination of the skeletons in the Sinclair castle’s closets; its rent turns out to be extracted in personal sacrifices. Brilliantly, Lockhart resists simply crucifying the Sinclairs, which might make the family’s foreshadowed tragedy predictable or even satisfying. Instead, she humanizes them (and their painful contradictions) by including nostalgic images that showcase the love shared among Cady, her two cousins closest in age, and Gat, the Heathcliff-esque figure she has always loved. Though increasingly disenchanted with the Sinclair legacy of self-absorption, the four believe family redemption is possible—if they have the courage to act. Their sincere hopes and foolish naïveté make the teens’ desperate, grand gesture all that much more tragic.
Riveting, brutal and beautifully told. (Fiction. 14 & up)Pub Date: May 13, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-385-74126-2
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: March 16, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2014
PROFILES
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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