Suspenseful and gripping, if lacking in texture: a fable of hope in harrowing conditions.
An economically privileged girl unexpectedly experiences urban homelessness.
Lola and Amit, her brother, live a comfortable life with their widowed father. They have a servant, go to good schools, and want for nothing. But in quick succession, their housekeeper has a baby and quits working for them, the school break begins, and their father fails to return from work one day during the height of monsoon season. As days turn to weeks without any word from Dad, the children begin to fear the worst. They are ultimately evicted from their home and must adapt to street life. Their possessions are stolen, they do odd jobs, and they rest in dark corners and rusted-out train cars. Matters are made worse when Lola and Amit are separated by crowds during a festival. Lola links up with more seasoned street kids, who divulge the particulars of their circumstances with her. A terse boy named Rafi shares his shelter and supplies and helps her hold on to hope. This story succeeds as a page-turning survival adventure and as an indictment of global capitalism’s brutality. However, with a tidy conclusion and a setting devoid of distinct cultural markers, it holds the real challenges of millions struggling in urban poverty throughout the world at arm’s length. Contextual clues suggest that the story might be set in South Asia.
Suspenseful and gripping, if lacking in texture: a fable of hope in harrowing conditions. (Fiction. 9-14)Pub Date: Sept. 12, 2023
ISBN: 9781782692553
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Pushkin Children’s Books
Review Posted Online: July 26, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2023
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
Good Guys and Bad get just deserts in the end, and Stanley gets plenty of opportunities to display pluck and valor in this...
Sentenced to a brutal juvenile detention camp for a crime he didn't commit, a wimpy teenager turns four generations of bad family luck around in this sunburnt tale of courage, obsession, and buried treasure from Sachar (Wayside School Gets a Little Stranger, 1995, etc.).
Driven mad by the murder of her black beau, a schoolteacher turns on the once-friendly, verdant town of Green Lake, Texas, becomes feared bandit Kissin' Kate Barlow, and dies, laughing, without revealing where she buried her stash. A century of rainless years later, lake and town are memories—but, with the involuntary help of gangs of juvenile offenders, the last descendant of the last residents is still digging. Enter Stanley Yelnats IV, great-grandson of one of Kissin' Kate's victims and the latest to fall to the family curse of being in the wrong place at the wrong time; under the direction of The Warden, a woman with rattlesnake venom polish on her long nails, Stanley and each of his fellow inmates dig a hole a day in the rock-hard lake bed. Weeks of punishing labor later, Stanley digs up a clue, but is canny enough to conceal the information of which hole it came from. Through flashbacks, Sachar weaves a complex net of hidden relationships and well-timed revelations as he puts his slightly larger-than-life characters under a sun so punishing that readers will be reaching for water bottles.
Good Guys and Bad get just deserts in the end, and Stanley gets plenty of opportunities to display pluck and valor in this rugged, engrossing adventure. (Fiction. 9-13)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998
ISBN: 978-0-374-33265-5
Page Count: 233
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2000
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