Ghanaian teenager Gloria Bampo has hit a rough patch. She failed most of her school exams, her long-unemployed father has lost himself to religion and her mother is ravaged by a mysterious sickness. Her one consolation, her older sister Effie, has discovered boys and all but disappeared. Gloria is offered a job in a distant city with Christine, a doctor who needs househelp. Her father is quick to assent, with one condition: In lieu of payment, Christine must take responsibility for Gloria's future and adopt her as a sister. Gloria adjusts easily, studies hard and explores her newfound freedom. But when the temptations of her new life—brand-name clothes and handsome doctors—prove hard to resist, a misunderstanding cuts a rift between Gloria and Christine. Each must confront class stereotypes and re-examine the meaning of family. Badoe's sharp and engaging prose unfolds the story with spryness, deftly navigating readers through heady social issues. But she wastes readers' goodwill at the end with a conclusion both haphazard and overly moralistic, jarringly out of place in this otherwise thoughtful and well-excuted novel. (Ghanaian glossary) (Fiction. YA)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-88899-996-2
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Groundwood
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2010
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
“Death is a period / at the end of a sentence,” concludes Annaleah, the 16-year-old protagonist of Schutz’s captivating fictional follow-up to her verse memoir (I Don’t Want To Be Crazy, 2006). And much like the resolute finality fixed in that tiny dot, Annaleah spends a great deal of this free-verse novel stuck contemplating the harsh reality that her sometime boyfriend, Brian—a seemingly healthy, dark-haired, cloudy-blue–eyed 17-year-old—has just dropped dead on the basketball court. Reeling from both physical loss and lack of closure to the meaning of their clandestine relationship, Annaleah finds herself routinely visiting and addressing the deceased Brian, until a chance graveside encounter yields advice that finally begins to hit home: “Nothing grows here,” says Brian’s grandmother, “besides grass.” At first blush appearing to pull out all the melodramatic stops in classic teen fashion, these refreshingly spare lines tackle tough relational issues—intimacy, risk, abandonment—with aplomb, making for a moving tale that also effectively shows teens how life can go on. (Fiction/poetry. 14 & up)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2010
ISBN: 970-0-545-16911-0
Page Count: 304
Publisher: PUSH/Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Sept. 15, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2010
BOOK REVIEW
In the current game of one-upsmanship that is the teen paranormal romance market, how does one top vampires, faeries, angels (fallen and otherwise) and the like? Why, make your dark and brooding male lead the Lord of Death, of course. Seventeen-year-old Pierce Oliviera and her mother have just moved to Isla Huesos (an alternative Key West) to start over after her near-death experience two years earlier (she drowned in the backyard swimming pool) and her parents' subsequent breakup. But Isla Huesos just happens to be a portal to the Underworld, making it very easy for tall, dark and handsome John to monitor the girl who ran away from him at 15. She wants to live, darn it, and bad things always happen when he shows up, so why is she so unhappy when he takes back the magical necklace he gave her when she was dead? Cabot's a pro; Pierce is a perfectly likable if almost preternaturally good protagonist; her relationships with her ex-con uncle, underachieving cousin and new buddy Kayla are genuinely endearing, and her interactions with John have the right mix of humor and sexual chemistry. A refreshingly offhandedly gay cemetery sexton rather testily helps Pierce along the way. Ultimately, though, the conventions of the form leach real suspense from the plot, making it feel more like a progress to the inevitable sequel (Underworld, coming in the indefinable soon) than any real reboot of the genre. (Paranormal romance. 14 & up)
Pub Date: April 26, 2011
ISBN: 970-0-545-28410-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Point/Scholastic
Review Posted Online: April 4, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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