Hero-worship comes face to face with human reality in this coming-of-age tale set in Hawaii. Thirteen-year-old Mikey’s father ran out on him before he was even born, so when his stepfather Bill came along five years ago, he was more than ready for a father. There is nothing he wants more than to grow up to be just like Bill, so when Bill is forced to let the deckhand on his charter fishing boat go, Mikey jumps at the opportunity to help out. A day on the water with two loutish tourists and a beautiful 16-year-old girl changes everything. Salisbury (Jungle Dogs, 1998, etc.) effectively takes the reader to the scene, presenting a tiny, temporary microculture in which the power relationships among the characters are laid out starkly against the sparkling blue tropical sea. Bad fishing luck, Mikey’s critical mistake in fouling the line when a marlin is hooked, and a series of humiliations at the hands of the boat’s clients culminate in Bill’s betrayal of the sport fishing code—and the revelation of his feet of clay to Mikey. The language couldn’t be more evocative: “The ocean rushed into his ears, his nose, the warm watery pressure of a billion miles of sea pressing in on every inch of his body.” The rhythm of the text parallels the fishing trip—reflective and almost somnolent in between bites, punctuated by heart-stopping action when a fish is on the line. The tightly-focused narration allows Mikey’s emotions full play but hinders the full development of the secondary characters—in particular Alison, the daughter of one of the louts, who acts mostly as a sounding board for Mikey but whose own emotions and motivations remain somewhat enigmatic. This is a small quibble; as an exploration of one boy’s conflicted feelings about fatherhood and his own impending manhood, this novel delivers beautifully. (Fiction. 10-14)
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-385-72918-9
Page Count: 190
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2001
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
Rich and strange (and kitted out with an eye-catching cover), but stronger in the set pieces than the internal logic.
Chainani works an elaborate sea change akin to Gregory Maguire’s Wicked (1995), though he leaves the waters muddied.
Every four years, two children, one regarded as particularly nice and the other particularly nasty, are snatched from the village of Gavaldon by the shadowy School Master to attend the divided titular school. Those who survive to graduate become major or minor characters in fairy tales. When it happens to sweet, Disney princess–like Sophie and her friend Agatha, plain of features, sour of disposition and low of self-esteem, they are both horrified to discover that they’ve been dropped not where they expect but at Evil and at Good respectively. Gradually—too gradually, as the author strings out hundreds of pages of Hogwarts-style pranks, classroom mishaps and competitions both academic and romantic—it becomes clear that the placement wasn’t a mistake at all. Growing into their true natures amid revelations and marked physical changes, the two spark escalating rivalry between the wings of the school. This leads up to a vicious climactic fight that sees Good and Evil repeatedly switching sides. At this point, readers are likely to feel suddenly left behind, as, thanks to summary deus ex machina resolutions, everything turns out swell(ish).
Rich and strange (and kitted out with an eye-catching cover), but stronger in the set pieces than the internal logic. (Fantasy. 11-13)Pub Date: May 14, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-06-210489-2
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Feb. 12, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2013
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