Having taken on the departure—and subsequent return—of a father in The Way a Door Closes (illustrated by Shane W. Evans, 2003) and Keeping the Night Watch (illustrated by E.B. Lewis, 2008), Smith turns to the loss of a mother. “[C]an’t nobody love me / like my momma do,” exults the narrator, a little girl at the opening of the book. Her mother is the center of her life, her stepfather notable only when he’s away and she can snuggle in bed with her mother. So when her mother dies, the now-preteen girl is a “motherless shell.” The raw emotion contained in these poems is undeniably visceral. But the unnamed narrator seems to exist in a vacuum; the glancing references to friends and relatives are not enough to answer readers’ natural questions about whom she lives with, how they help (or not) the grieving child—a curiosity after two such piercing looks at the effect of a loss on an entire family. The author supplies her own visual accompaniment, lovely torn-paper collages that complement but do not fill the gaps in the text. Beautiful but incomplete. (Poetry. 8-12)
Pub Date: April 1, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-8050-8231-9
Page Count: 80
Publisher: Christy Ottaviano/Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2009
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A quick, agreeable caper, this may spark some discussion even as it entertains.
Myla and Peter step into the path of a gang when they unite forces to find Peter’s runaway brother, Randall.
As they follow the graffiti tags that Randall has been painting in honor of the boys’ deceased father, they uncover a sinister history involving stolen diamonds, disappearances, and deaths. It started long ago when the boys’ grandmother, a diamond-cutter, partnered with the head of the gang. She was rumored to have hidden his diamonds before her suspicious death, leaving clues to their whereabouts. Now everyone is searching, including Randall. The duo’s collaboration is initially an unwilling one fraught with misunderstandings. Even after Peter and Myla bond over being the only people of color in an otherwise white school (Myla is Indian-American; mixed-race Peter is Indian, African-American, and white), Peter can’t believe the gang is after Myla. But Myla possesses a necklace that holds a clue. Alternating first-person chapters allow peeks into how Myla, Peter, and Randall unravel the story and decipher clues. Savvy readers will put the pieces together, too, although false leads and red herrings are cleverly interwoven. The action stumbles at times, but it takes place against the rich backdrops of gritty New York City and history-laden Dobbs Ferry and is made all the more colorful by references to graffiti art and parkour.
A quick, agreeable caper, this may spark some discussion even as it entertains. (Mystery. 10-12)Pub Date: May 30, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-4197-2296-7
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Amulet/Abrams
Review Posted Online: Feb. 19, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Curtis debuts with a ten-year-old's lively account of his teenaged brother's ups and downs. Ken tries to make brother Byron out to be a real juvenile delinquent, but he comes across as more of a comic figure: getting stuck to the car when he kisses his image in a frozen side mirror, terrorized by his mother when she catches him playing with matches in the bathroom, earning a shaved head by coming home with a conk. In between, he defends Ken from a bully and buries a bird he kills by accident. Nonetheless, his parents decide that only a long stay with tough Grandma Sands will turn him around, so they all motor from Michigan to Alabama, arriving in time to witness the infamous September bombing of a Sunday school. Ken is funny and intelligent, but he gives readers a clearer sense of Byron's character than his own and seems strangely unaffected by his isolation and harassment (for his odd look—he has a lazy eye—and high reading level) at school. Curtis tries to shoehorn in more characters and subplots than the story will comfortably bear—as do many first novelists—but he creates a well-knit family and a narrator with a distinct, believable voice. (Fiction. 10-12)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-385-32175-9
Page Count: 210
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1995
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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