A veteran high-school teacher cracks, holding his class at gunpoint on the last day of school in this drama-in-poetry from Glenn (Who Killed Mr. Chippendale?, 1996, etc.). Writing in conversational free-verse trains of thought, Glenn probes the hopes, fears, conceits, and moods of students, officials, and bystanders, introducing each of the hostages with a series of vignettes that trace the evolution of a particular idea or relationship through four years of school and to the beginning of class that fateful day. Fond of playing with language and irony—e.g., pairing poems in which the speakers express opposite views in nearly the same words—the author keeps the focus so firmly on individuals that the plot is really only a pretext for a series of earnest character portraits. From Morton Potter's determined assault on his weight problem to Denise Slattery cooing to her unborn child, readers will find plenty of familiar peer attitudes and situations with which to identify and to ponder. The teacher's own voice is heard in a handful of despondent poems: ``I speak./Who listens?/I teach./Who cares? . . . There's little I have done to make a difference.'' After the teacher's capture, police find a clipping in his pocket describing his 27-year-old son's apparent suicide by drowning. An arresting, if undeveloped, premise cements a gallery of recognizable high-school seniors fretting about—or blowing off—their pasts and futures. (Fiction. 12-14)
Pub Date: March 1, 1997
ISBN: 0-525-67548-5
Page Count: 183
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1997
A legend in her own mind, former New Yorker Mary Elizabeth (“My true name is Lola”) Cep sweeps into her new suburban New Jersey high school and runs smack into a stone wall named Carla Santini: class queen, beautiful, clever, and vicious. In a series of sharp skirmishes, both teenagers display generous quantities of grit and ego, and though Lola beats out Carla for the lead in the school play, she also, thanks to a positive penchant for embellishing the truth, maneuvers herself into a reckless nighttime junket into Manhattan with her mousy friend, Ella. Hours later, the two find their wildest dreams coming true as they accompany a popular, very drunk rock star to a hot post-concert party. Sheldon (Boy Of My Dreams, 1997) gives her fast-talking protagonist a winning supporting cast (led by Ella, who turns out to be unexpectedly levelheaded and loyal in the crunch), a worthy rival and triumphs that are not easily won; readers will cheer the high spots, groan at the low, and applaud Lola in general for her grandly disarming style. (Fiction. 10-13)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-7636-0822-X
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1999
From Thomas (Slave Day, p. 306, etc.), an attempt to draw a cross-section of humanity from a group of high-school students performing community service. In the first chapter, as part of a college course, Randall is assigned to follow up on nine high-school seniors who had to do community service projects to graduate, by interviewing them and the participants in their projects. He's a skeptic after his own experience on the receiving end of someone else's community-service project a decade earlier. The next nine chapters are more like short stories, each one a self-contained first-person account by one of the nine seniors: Some perform their service with honor, some with cynicism. Thomas covers a lot of territory and demands that readers keep track of several characters and activities; each narrator establishes himself or herself, describes the mission, learns a lesson, or hits a defining moment, then checks out, without a reappearance of Randall for perspective or hindsight—which leaves the book's premise, and readers, dangling. It's a promising work—it just doesn't feel finished. (Fiction. 12-14)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1997
ISBN: 0-689-80958-1
Page Count: 184
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1997
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