Short, sweet, and to the point.
In the eighth and final book in the Mostly Miserable Life of April Sinclair series, the eponymous character turns 15, finishes up ninth grade, and has the entire summer to look forward to.
She’s going to get her learner’s permit, and she’s on her way to becoming Leo’s girlfriend. However, as always, April’s life consists of sour as well as sweet: Gaga, her grandmother, dies; she and her former bestie, Brynn, are still not speaking; and her newer best friend, Sophie, is moving. As April, the eldest of three sisters (the younger two are named May and June), tries to make sense out of the mysteries of adolescent life, she invokes Gaga’s wisdom to guide her. She’ll need to learn that things don’t always turn out the way she planned; sometimes they work out in another, positive way. April’s biggest strength lies in her ability to see when she’s wrong, acknowledge her mistakes, and offer an apology when one is due. Her first-person narration via diary is matter-of-fact; she’s neither quirkily clever nor overly dry. Readers need not be familiar with the previous seven books, but they may be able to more fully appreciate April’s ups and downs if they are. None of the characters seem to be anything other than white.
Short, sweet, and to the point. (Fiction. 11-14)Pub Date: April 1, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-4677-8591-4
Page Count: 168
Publisher: Darby Creek
Review Posted Online: Feb. 13, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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Well-educated American boys from privileged families have abundant options for college and career. For Chiko, their Burmese counterpart, there are no good choices. There is never enough to eat, and his family lives in constant fear of the military regime that has imprisoned Chiko’s physician father. Soon Chiko is commandeered by the army, trained to hunt down members of the Karenni ethnic minority. Tai, another “recruit,” uses his streetwise survival skills to help them both survive. Meanwhile, Tu Reh, a Karenni youth whose village was torched by the Burmese Army, has been chosen for his first military mission in his people’s resistance movement. How the boys meet and what comes of it is the crux of this multi-voiced novel. While Perkins doesn’t sugarcoat her subject—coming of age in a brutal, fascistic society—this is a gentle story with a lot of heart, suitable for younger readers than the subject matter might suggest. It answers the question, “What is it like to be a child soldier?” clearly, but with hope. (author’s note, historical note) (Fiction. 11-14)
Pub Date: July 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-58089-328-2
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Charlesbridge
Review Posted Online: May 31, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2010
Stands out neither as a folk-tale retelling, a coming-of-age story, nor a Holocaust novel.
A Holocaust tale with a thin “Hansel and Gretel” veneer from the author of The Devil’s Arithmetic (1988).
Chaim and Gittel, 14-year-old twins, live with their parents in the Lodz ghetto, forced from their comfortable country home by the Nazis. The siblings are close, sharing a sign-based twin language; Chaim stutters and communicates primarily with his sister. Though slowly starving, they make the best of things with their beloved parents, although it’s more difficult once they must share their tiny flat with an unpleasant interfaith couple and their Mischling (half-Jewish) children. When the family hears of their impending “wedding invitation”—the ghetto idiom for a forthcoming order for transport—they plan a dangerous escape. Their journey is difficult, and one by one, the adults vanish. Ultimately the children end up in a fictional child labor camp, making ammunition for the German war effort. Their story effectively evokes the dehumanizing nature of unremitting silence. Nevertheless, the dense, distancing narrative (told in a third-person contemporaneous narration focused through Chaim with interspersed snippets from Gittel’s several-decades-later perspective) has several consistency problems, mostly regarding the relative religiosity of this nominally secular family. One theme seems to be frustration with those who didn’t fight back against overwhelming odds, which makes for a confusing judgment on the suffering child protagonists.
Stands out neither as a folk-tale retelling, a coming-of-age story, nor a Holocaust novel. (author’s note) (Historical fiction. 12-14)Pub Date: March 6, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-399-25778-0
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Philomel
Review Posted Online: Dec. 20, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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