Racism and her mother’s miscarriage bring an end to a happy chapter in the life of a California lighthouse-keeper’s daughter in this emotionally tumultuous novel, set in the 1880s. Until a group of townsfolk band together to drive the “celestials,” the small Chinese immigrant community, out of Crescent City, the only cloud in Eliza Jane’s sky is her goat Parthenia’s genius at escaping to munch on other people’s flowers. Despite her father’s orders to stay away from the “heathen,” however, she finds herself drawn to a talented young artist, and inadvertently becomes an angry, horrified witness to incidents of harassment that culminate in a nighttime mass kidnapping of Chinese women and children. Meanwhile, she is also wrestling with her religious faith after her mother loses a baby, and coming to discover that her father isn’t quite the pillar of strength she had always believed him to be. Drawing the forced removal from historical accounts, Fletcher enriches her tale’s setting with carefully researched detail about lighthouses and the families that kept them, and ultimately brings to her troubled protagonist both an epiphany that restores her respect for God and her father, and a new baby brother. An intense, meaty historical novel from the author of Shadow Spinner (1998). (Fiction. 10-12)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-689-84133-7
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Atheneum
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2001
On equal footing with a garden-variety potato.
The new kid in school endures becoming the school mascot.
Ben Hardy has never cared for potatoes, and this distaste has become a barrier to adjusting to life in his new Idaho town. His school’s mascot is the Spud, and after a series of misfortunes, Ben is enlisted to don the potato costume and cheer on his school’s team. Ben balances his duties as a life-sized potato against his desperate desire to hide the fact that he’s the dork in the suit. After all, his cute new crush, Jayla, wouldn’t be too impressed to discover Ben’s secret. The ensuing novel is a fairly boilerplate middle–grade narrative: snarky tween protagonist, the crush that isn’t quite what she seems, and a pair of best friends that have more going on than our hero initially believes. The author keeps the novel moving quickly, pushing forward with witty asides and narrative momentum so fast that readers won’t really mind that the plot’s spine is one they’ve encountered many times before. Once finished, readers will feel little resonance and move on to the next book in their to-read piles, but in the moment the novel is pleasant enough. Ben, Jayla, and Ben’s friend Hunter are white while Ellie, Ben’s other good pal, is Latina.
On equal footing with a garden-variety potato. (Fiction. 10-12)Pub Date: March 24, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-11866-5
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Nov. 23, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
It’s great to see these kids “so enthusiastic about committing high treason.” (historical note) (Historical fiction. 10-12)
Near the end of World War II, two kids join their parents in a plot to kill Adolf Hitler.
Max, 12, lives with his parents and his older sister in a Berlin that’s under constant air bombardment. During one such raid, a mortally wounded man stumbles into the white German family’s home and gasps out his last wish: “The Führer must die.” With this nighttime visitation, Max and Gerta discover their parents have been part of a resistance cell, and the siblings want in. They meet a colorful band of upper-class types who seem almost too whimsical to be serious. Despite her charming levity, Prussian aristocrat and cell leader Frau Becker is grimly aware of the stakes. She enlists Max and Gerta as couriers who sneak forged identification papers to Jews in hiding. Max and Gerta are merely (and realistically) cogs in the adults’ plans, but there’s plenty of room for their own heroism. They escape capture, rescue each other when they’re caught out during an air raid, and willingly put themselves repeatedly at risk to catch a spy. The fictional plotters—based on a mix of several real anti-Hitler resistance cells—are portrayed with a genuine humor, giving them the space to feel alive even in such a slim volume.
It’s great to see these kids “so enthusiastic about committing high treason.” (historical note) (Historical fiction. 10-12)Pub Date: April 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-338-35902-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Jan. 20, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2020
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