Despite Yep’s distracting use of italics for spoken English, this is a smooth, tightly woven, and thoroughly satisfying...
Yep (Cockroach Cooties, p. 394, etc.) draws from his own family history to create an intriguing story, again utilizing narrative to explore conflicting cultures.
Joan, the eldest of three children, is increasingly frustrated as a first-generation American of strict Chinese parents. It is December 1927 when she and her younger siblings convince their father to give Christmas a chance. They devise a contest: all the children must be good for the three weeks leading up to the holiday. It is the new neighbors, the fabulously exotic and wealthy Mr. Barrington and his daughter, Victoria, who act as catalyst to Joan’s open rebellion. Christmas is apparently lost. Joan’s father is also becoming increasingly ill with crippling stomach pains. Eventually the Barringtons show themselves to be double-dealers and with Father bedridden, Joan realizes her deep love for him and the sacrifices he has made for his family. Desperately seeking a way to help him, Joan refers to a Chinese tale he has told her and comes to believe that her father is ill because his Dream Soul is lost. She trudges through the snow, calling to his wayward soul and comes to believe she’s found it. When Father begins to heal, she’s not certain if it is the return of his soul or a change of diet based on learning that it is milk his stomach can’t stand. Infused with warmth, Christmas is seen through the eyes of those who have never before experienced the beauty of the tree and the joy of exchanging gifts.
Despite Yep’s distracting use of italics for spoken English, this is a smooth, tightly woven, and thoroughly satisfying story. (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Sept. 30, 2000
ISBN: 0-06-028389-0
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2000
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The poem/novel ends with only a trace of hope; there are no pat endings, but a glimpse of beauty wrought from brutal reality.
Billie Jo tells of her life in Oklahoma during the Dust Bowl: Her mother dies after a gruesome accident caused by her father's leaving a bucket of kerosene near the stove; Billie Jo is partially responsible—fully responsible in the eyes of the community—and sustains injuries that seem to bring to a halt her dreams of playing the piano.
Finding a way through her grief is not made easier by her taciturn father, who went on a drinking binge while Billie Joe's mother, not yet dead, begged for water. Told in free-verse poetry of dated entries that span the winter of 1934 to the winter of 1935, this is an unremittingly bleak portrait of one corner of Depression-era life. In Billie Jo, the only character who comes to life, Hesse (The Music of Dolphins, 1996, etc.) presents a hale and determined heroine who confronts unrelenting misery and begins to transcend it.
The poem/novel ends with only a trace of hope; there are no pat endings, but a glimpse of beauty wrought from brutal reality. (Fiction. 9-12)Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1997
ISBN: 978-0-590-36080-7
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1997
Ideas abound, but when the focus shifts from Thomas' determination to take the measure of the house (literally and...
Dies Drear? Ohio abolitionist, keeper of a key station on the Underground Railroad, bearer of a hypercharged name that is not even noted as odd. Which is odd: everything else has an elaborate explanation.
Unlike Zeely, Miss Hamilton's haunting first, this creates mystery only to reveal sleight-of-hand, creates a character who's larger than life only to reveal his double. Thirteen-year-old Thomas Small is fascinated, and afraid, of the huge, uncharted house his father, a specialist in Negro Civil War history, has purposefully rented. A strange pair of children, tiny Pesty and husky Mac Darrow, seem to tease him; old bearded Pluto, long-time caretaker and local legend, seems bent on scaring the Smalls away. But how can a lame old man run fast enough to catch Thomas from behind? what do the triangles affixed to their doors signify? who spread a sticky paste of foodstuffs over the kitchen? Pluto, accosted, disappears. . . into a cavern that was Dies Drear's treasure house of decorative art, his solace for the sequestered slaves. But Pluto is not, despite his nickname, the devil; neither is he alone; his actor-son has returned to help him stave off the greedy Darrows and the Smalls, if they should also be hostile to the house, the treasure, the tradition. Pluto as keeper of the flame would be more convincing without his, and his son's, histrionics, and without Pesty as a prodigy cherubim. There are some sharp observations of, and on, the Negro church historically and presently, and an aborted ideological debate regarding use of the Negro heritage.
Ideas abound, but when the focus shifts from Thomas' determination to take the measure of the house (literally and figuratively), the story becomes a charade. (Mystery. 8-12)Pub Date: Sept. 9, 1968
ISBN: 1416914056
Page Count: 260
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 26, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1968
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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