In this haunting, eloquent story, the barriers between inner and outer vision dissolve as a young immigrant loses the men she holds dear during the Civil War. Working as a barmaid at The Shinny, making lace by the yard in her spare time, and living in Swampoodle, a Washington, D.C. slum, Mairhe (pronounced ``Moira'') is filled with waking and sleeping dreams of her carefree, laughing brother Mike, who enlists without thinking of the effect it would have on her or their brokenhearted Da. Mairhe's days and dreams are also filled with the muddy, soldier-filled, brawling city itself: its gossip, love of contention, and sights both grand and ghastly. In between glimpses of Lincoln and repeated encounters with a slightly larger-than-life Walt Whitman, readers will get a strong sense of the febrile energy that animated (and still animates) the nation's capital, as well as a grounding in some enduring racial and political issues. Armstrong (Black-Eyed Susan, 1995, etc.) mixes vision and reality with breathtaking virtuosity—in one brilliant episode a St. Patrick's Day celebration at The Shinny is seamlessly intercut with a bloody battle being fought simultaneously miles away—salting Mairhe's narrative with poetic turns of phrase, snatches of song, story, and history. The Irish characters here are despised and displaced—having left one home behind, they have yet to find another. After Mike dies at Gettysburg, Mairhe sells her lace to buy Da passage back to Ireland, and discovers herself at last: ``bright as a star, delicate as lace, strong as a dream.'' So is her story. (Fiction. 11+)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-88152-2
Page Count: 119
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1996
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
When Death tells a story, you pay attention. Liesel Meminger is a young girl growing up outside of Munich in Nazi Germany, and Death tells her story as “an attempt—a flying jump of an attempt—to prove to me that you, and your human existence, are worth it.” When her foster father helps her learn to read and she discovers the power of words, Liesel begins stealing books from Nazi book burnings and the mayor’s wife’s library. As she becomes a better reader, she becomes a writer, writing a book about her life in such a miserable time. Liesel’s experiences move Death to say, “I am haunted by humans.” How could the human race be “so ugly and so glorious” at the same time? This big, expansive novel is a leisurely working out of fate, of seemingly chance encounters and events that ultimately touch, like dominoes as they collide. The writing is elegant, philosophical and moving. Even at its length, it’s a work to read slowly and savor. Beautiful and important. (Fiction. 12+)
Pub Date: March 14, 2006
ISBN: 0-375-83100-2
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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