A compassionate story of homelessness and friendship, recycled art and community.
In Chandigarh, a town in northern India, is Nek Chand’s Rock Garden, a magnificent, 40-acre garden of some 5,000 sculptures made from recycled ceramics, industrial waste, and discarded household scrap—and the real-life inspiration for this historical novel.
Bradbury (A Moment Comes, 2013, etc.), who worked as a teacher in Chandigarh, offers a thoughtful novel based on this story, featuring 12-year-old dark-haired (and presumed dark-skinned) protagonist Ram. A shrewd orphan street kid, Ram accidently discovers Nek Chand’s secret, built over years on unused government land, and is delighted to help him make those beautiful figurines. When the situation turns desperate and the garden is threatened, Ram shows them to his friend Daya and her father, Mr. Singh, an art-loving urban planner who helps save this incredible folk art from being demolished. Intertwined with Ram’s story, and printed on pages with a patterned background, is an incomplete version of the Ramayana, the mythological legend of Rama, Sita, and the 10-headed demon Ravana, as it parallels Ram’s life. Some details do not conform to the norms of traditional Indian society. Why does Mr. Singh allow his daughter to roam the streets with homeless urchin Ram? Why doesn’t Ram address Mr. Singh and Nek Chand with proper respect, as Singhji and Nekji? Apart from this, Bradbury immerses readers in Ram’s world, authentically describing the sights, smells, and sounds of Chandigarh’s streets and the daily lives of its inhabitants. Readers will wish for visuals to complement Bradbury’s descriptions of Chand’s creations; she does provide further information on both it and the Ramayana in an author’s note.
A compassionate story of homelessness and friendship, recycled art and community. (glossary) (Historical fiction. 9-13)Pub Date: June 6, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-4424-6827-6
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Caitlyn Dlouhy/Atheneum
Review Posted Online: March 14, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2017
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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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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