The lives of two teenage girls, each seeking a connection with her dead mother, intertwine as they recover from the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. When the earthquake strikes, orphan Kate Keely loses her home to fire and flees with her aunt and Irish neighbors. They overcome their considerable problems, and a year later are running a boarding house. Jolie Logan, the sickly daughter of a wealthy doctor, loses her mother in the earthquake and becomes obsessed with restoring their house in her mother’s memory to exactly how it was before the quake. When Jolie needs a companion, Kate comes to live with the difficult girl. Kate’s dream is to visit Ireland, her mother’s home, leaving painful memories of San Francisco behind. Her wish comes true when they go to visit Jolie’s aunt in Ireland, but the trip jeopardizes Jolie’s precarious health. Kate, a personable, self-reliant protagonist, learns through leaving to value her home in San Francisco. Jolie, who struggles with a weak heart and inflamed joints, remains largely self-absorbed until just before the end. Interesting details about the earthquake, the train journey across the country, Ireland, and conditions for women at the time enliven the text. However, the realistic tone shifts jarringly with the introduction of an Irish doctor’s wife who has mystical powers for healing and predicting the future. The story closes on a sentimental note at odds with the earlier straightforward story. An enjoyable read but not in the league with Thesman’s strongest works, such as Rachel Chance (o.p.) and The Rain Catchers (1991). (Fiction. 11-14)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-670-89278-5
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2001
From England’s Children’s Laureate, a searing WWI-era tale of a close extended family repeatedly struck by adversity and injustice. On vigil in the trenches, 17-year-old Thomas Peaceful looks back at a childhood marked by guilt over his father’s death, anger at the shabby treatment his strong-minded mother receives from the local squire and others—and deep devotion to her, to his brain-damaged brother Big Joe, and especially to his other older brother Charlie, whom he has followed into the army by lying about his age. Weaving telling incidents together, Morpurgo surrounds the Peacefuls with mean-spirited people at home, and devastating wartime experiences on the front, ultimately setting readers up for a final travesty following Charlie’s refusal of an order to abandon his badly wounded brother. Themes and small-town class issues here may find some resonance on this side of the pond, but the particular cultural and historical context will distance the story from American readers—particularly as the pace is deliberate, and the author’s hints about where it’s all heading are too rare and subtle to create much suspense. (Fiction. 11-13, adult)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-439-63648-5
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2004
Despite the stale fat-to-curvy pattern, compelling world building with a Southern European, pseudo-Christian feel,...
Adventure drags our heroine all over the map of fantasyland while giving her the opportunity to use her smarts.
Elisa—Princess Lucero-Elisa de Riqueza of Orovalle—has been chosen for Service since the day she was born, when a beam of holy light put a Godstone in her navel. She's a devout reader of holy books and is well-versed in the military strategy text Belleza Guerra, but she has been kept in ignorance of world affairs. With no warning, this fat, self-loathing princess is married off to a distant king and is embroiled in political and spiritual intrigue. War is coming, and perhaps only Elisa's Godstone—and knowledge from the Belleza Guerra—can save them. Elisa uses her untried strategic knowledge to always-good effect. With a character so smart that she doesn't have much to learn, body size is stereotypically substituted for character development. Elisa’s "mountainous" body shrivels away when she spends a month on forced march eating rat, and thus she is a better person. Still, it's wonderfully refreshing to see a heroine using her brain to win a war rather than strapping on a sword and charging into battle.
Despite the stale fat-to-curvy pattern, compelling world building with a Southern European, pseudo-Christian feel, reminiscent of Naomi Kritzer's Fires of the Faithful (2002), keeps this entry fresh. (Fantasy. 12-14)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-06-202648-4
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Greenwillow Books
Review Posted Online: July 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2011
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