Critical historical information conveyed through poems that don’t do justice to the subject’s emotional weight.
The story of a friendship torn apart when Nazi ideology arrives on America’s shores.
It’s 1937, and two young best friends—Benjamin Puterman, who is Jewish, and Thomas Anspach, who is German American and presumably Christian—are anticipating the joys of summer. But Tommy’s harsh father has other plans: He enrolls his 13-year-old son in Camp Nordland in rural New Jersey. The camp’s purpose is to immerse German American youths in their heritage, including the propaganda of Hitler’s Nazi Party, and Tommy quickly learns that he can’t be friends with Benjy anymore. But the people of New Jersey aren’t staying silent about Nordland, and when Benjy’s father joins the Newark Minutemen, a group of “anti-Nazi vigilantes,” Benjy, also 13, pleads with his elders to let him help. His plea leads to the founding of the Minutekids. As the years pass and Hitler marches across Europe, Benjy and Tommy, who are in school together, circle each other. When the 1940s roll around, the ground shifts. Is reconciliation possible? Each boy struggles with different types of personal adversity, and the challenges of their relationship highlight an important, lesser-known chapter in U.S. history. Unfortunately, many of the poems feel flat, and the two teens’ voices sound very alike and not much like those of real adolescents.
Critical historical information conveyed through poems that don’t do justice to the subject’s emotional weight. (author’s note, glossary, timeline, source notes, bibliography, further reading/viewing, picture credits) (Verse historical fiction. 13-18)Pub Date: Dec. 5, 2023
ISBN: 9781662680250
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Calkins Creek/Astra Books for Young Readers
Review Posted Online: Sept. 9, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2023
A sparse, beautifully drawn story about a teen discovering her heritage.
In this YA graphic novel, an alienated Métis girl learns about her people’s Canadian history.
Métis teenager Echo Desjardins finds herself living in a home away from her mother, attending a new school, and feeling completely lonely as a result. She daydreams in class and wanders the halls listening to a playlist of her mother’s old CDs. At home, she shuts herself up in her room. But when her history teacher begins to lecture about the Pemmican Wars of early 1800s Saskatchewan, Echo finds herself swept back to that time. She sees the Métis people following the bison with their mobile hunting camp, turning the animals’ meat into pemmican, which they sell to the Northwest Company in order to buy supplies for the winter. Echo meets a young girl named Marie, who introduces Echo to the rhythms of Métis life. She finally understands what her Métis heritage actually means. But the joys are short-lived, as conflicts between the Métis and their rivals in the Hudson Bay Company come to a bloody head. The tragic history of her people will help explain the difficulties of the Métis in Echo’s own time, including those of her mother and the teen herself. Accompanied by dazzling art by Henderson (A Blanket of Butterflies, 2017, etc.) and colorist Yaciuk (Fire Starters, 2016, etc.), this tale is a brilliant bit of time travel. Readers are swept back to 19th-century Saskatchewan as fully as Echo herself. Vermette’s (The Break, 2017, etc.) dialogue is sparse, offering a mostly visual, deeply contemplative juxtaposition of the present and the past. Echo’s eventual encounter with her mother (whose fate has been kept from readers up to that point) offers a powerful moment of connection that is both unexpected and affecting. “Are you…proud to be Métis?” Echo asks her, forcing her mother to admit, sheepishly: “I don’t really know much about it.” With this series opener, the author provides a bit more insight into what that means.
A sparse, beautifully drawn story about a teen discovering her heritage.Pub Date: March 15, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-55379-678-7
Page Count: 48
Publisher: HighWater Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 28, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A dizzying, intimate romance.
Rowan teams up with her academic nemesis to win a citywide scavenger hunt.
Rowan Roth and Neil McNair have been rivals in a never-ending game of one-upmanship since freshman year. Now, on the last day of senior year, Rowan hopes to best Neil once and for all as valedictorian, then win Howl, a scavenger hunt with a $5,000 cash prize. She also hopes to sneak away to her favorite romance author’s book signing; no one’s ever respected her passion for the genre, not even her children’s book author/illustrator parents. But Rowan’s named salutatorian, and vengeful classmates plot to end her and Neil’s reign. At first their partnership is purely strategic, but as the pair traverse the city, they begin to open up. Rowan learns that Neil is Jewish too and can relate to both significant cultural touchstones and experiences of casual anti-Semitism. As much as Rowan tries to deny it, real feelings begin to bloom. Set against a lovingly evoked Seattle backdrop, Rowan and Neil’s relationship develops in an absorbing slow burn, with clever banter and the delicious tension of first love. Issues of class, anti-Semitism, and sex are discussed frankly. Readers will emerge just as obsessed with this love story as Rowan is with her beloved romance novels. Rowan’s mother is Russian Jewish and Mexican, and her father is American Jewish and presumably White; most other characters are White.
A dizzying, intimate romance. (author’s note) (Romance. 13-18)Pub Date: July 28, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5344-4024-1
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Simon Pulse/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: April 7, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2020
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