Absorbing relationship drama with a convincing protagonist.
Nora’s summer vacation turns out to be the best—and also the worst—ever.
Narrator Nora’s sixth grade year—her first in a new school—ends with the disclosure that her classmates from the middle-class neighborhood of Solvang Heights have summer plans for travel with their families. Put on the spot, an ashamed Nora lies and says she’s going to the tropics. Only Nora and Wilmer, the boy who dropped by on the last day of school to meet the class he’ll join in the fall, live in Chaplin Court, a low-income apartment block dubbed Craplin Court. Nora’s reluctance to befriend Wilmer—he’s not cool or handsome in the way that her crush, Marcus, is—gradually eases as she struggles with the long stretch of summer, lack of friends, and an unemployed mother who seems to sleep all the time. Wilmer shares with Nora his discovery of the long-unoccupied former apartment complex caretaker’s flat, and the two resourcefully create a summer getaway they do their best to turn into a tropical escape. Evidence of the caretaker’s long-ago romance and heartbreak captures Nora’s and Wilmer’s imaginations. The transformation of the flat and the innocent playing house seem magical until the class mean girls find a way to bully Nora’s happiness out of her. Hints of the Norwegian setting come through in this translation that sheds light on socio-economic disparities. The resolution is satisfyingly happy.
Absorbing relationship drama with a convincing protagonist. (Fiction. 9-12)Pub Date: April 12, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-64690-018-3
Page Count: 300
Publisher: Arctis Books
Review Posted Online: Jan. 10, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
Charming, poignant, and thoughtfully woven.
An aspiring scientist and a budding artist become friends and help each other with dream projects.
Unfolding in mid-1980s Sacramento, California, this story stars 12-year-olds Rosalind and Benjamin as first-person narrators in alternating chapters. Ro’s father, a fellow space buff, was killed by a drunk driver; the rocket they were working on together lies unfinished in her closet. As for Benji, not only has his best friend, Amir, moved away, but the comic book holding the clue for locating his dad is also missing. Along with their profound personal losses, the protagonists share a fixation with the universe’s intriguing potential: Ro decides to complete the rocket and hopes to launch mementos of her father into outer space while Benji’s conviction that aliens and UFOs are real compels his imagination and creativity as an artist. An accident in science class triggers a chain of events forcing Benji and Ro, who is new to the school, to interact and unintentionally learn each other’s secrets. They resolve to find Benji’s dad—a famous comic-book artist—and partner to finish Ro’s rocket for the science fair. Together, they overcome technical, scheduling, and geographical challenges. Readers will be drawn in by amusing and fantastical elements in the comic book theme, high emotional stakes that arouse sympathy, and well-drawn character development as the protagonists navigate life lessons around grief, patience, self-advocacy, and standing up for others. Ro is biracial (Chinese/White); Benji is White.
Charming, poignant, and thoughtfully woven. (Fiction. 9-12)Pub Date: Jan. 12, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-06-300888-5
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Quill Tree Books/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Oct. 26, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A deftly told story that dramatizes how Danes appointed themselves bodyguards—not only for their king, who was in the habit...
The author of the Anastasia books as well as more serious fiction (Rabble Starkey, 1987) offers her first historical fiction—a story about the escape of the Jews from Denmark in 1943.
Five years younger than Lisa in Carol Matas' Lisa's War (1989), Annemarie Johansen has, at 10, known three years of Nazi occupation. Though ever cautious and fearful of the ubiquitous soldiers, she is largely unaware of the extent of the danger around her; the Resistance kept even its participants safer by telling them as little as possible, and Annemarie has never been told that her older sister Lise died in its service. When the Germans plan to round up the Jews, the Johansens take in Annemarie's friend, Ellen Rosen, and pretend she is their daughter; later, they travel to Uncle Hendrik's house on the coast, where the Rosens and other Jews are transported by fishing boat to Sweden. Apart from Lise's offstage death, there is little violence here; like Annemarie, the reader is protected from the full implications of events—but will be caught up in the suspense and menace of several encounters with soldiers and in Annemarie's courageous run as courier on the night of the escape. The book concludes with the Jews' return, after the war, to homes well kept for them by their neighbors.
A deftly told story that dramatizes how Danes appointed themselves bodyguards—not only for their king, who was in the habit of riding alone in Copenhagen, but for their Jews. (Historical fiction. 9-12)Pub Date: April 1, 1989
ISBN: 0547577095
Page Count: 156
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: Oct. 17, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1989
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