An engaging tale about family and migration.
A Mayan girl immigrates to the United States in this middle-grade novel.
Twelve-year-old Ixchel is used to being away from her father, who works in California and occasionally comes home to Mérida, Mexico, where the tween’s mother and grandmother are raising her. But the girl is not accustomed to him failing to answer her letters. When Ixchel’s mother announces that she had a vision that the tween should join her father in the United States, the girl’s world is upended. She slowly warms to the idea, and her friend Rosa, whose brother lives in Texas, decides to make the trip with her. The girls make their way to Tijuana, but the “coyote” whose name they were given has left, and they are stuck with his nephew, who is well intentioned but inexperienced. After a first attempt at crossing the border fails, he sends the girls through a tunnel, where Rosa gets caught by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Ixchel narrowly escapes an attacker. Ixchel makes her way to Los Angeles, but her father is not overjoyed to see her, and she discovers his new wife and baby. With help from the art dealer who sells her mother’s weavings in his gallery, Ixchel and her father eventually reconcile, and she comes to terms with making a new life for herself in America. Patience tells a story of migration appropriate for young readers without being overly sanitized—for instance, the tension is palpable in Ixchel’s confrontation with her attacker, and there is mild violence. But the overall danger level is low, and the book never goes into detail about the threats an unaccompanied girl would likely face. While the depictions of Yucatecan life are vivid and well researched, they are clearly written for an American audience (“Although hundreds of years have passed since the conquistadores came from Spain, we Yucatec Maya are still proud to speak our language”). The plot and pacing are solid, and the characters are well developed, making for an enjoyable and educational story for young readers.
An engaging tale about family and migration.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-957146-98-0
Page Count: 200
Publisher: Paper Angel Press
Review Posted Online: Oct. 24, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Readers can still rely on this series to bring laughs.
The Heffley family’s house undergoes a disastrous attempt at home improvement.
When Great Aunt Reba dies, she leaves some money to the family. Greg’s mom calls a family meeting to determine what to do with their share, proposing home improvements and then overruling the family’s cartoonish wish lists and instead pushing for an addition to the kitchen. Before bringing in the construction crew, the Heffleys attempt to do minor maintenance and repairs themselves—during which Greg fails at the work in various slapstick scenes. Once the professionals are brought in, the problems keep getting worse: angry neighbors, terrifying problems in walls, and—most serious—civil permitting issues that put the kibosh on what work’s been done. Left with only enough inheritance to patch and repair the exterior of the house—and with the school’s dismal standardized test scores as a final straw—Greg’s mom steers the family toward moving, opening up house-hunting and house-selling storylines (and devastating loyal Rowley, who doesn’t want to lose his best friend). While Greg’s positive about the move, he’s not completely uncaring about Rowley’s action. (And of course, Greg himself is not as unaffected as he wishes.) The gags include effectively placed callbacks to seemingly incidental events (the “stress lizard” brought in on testing day is particularly funny) and a lampoon of after-school-special–style problem books. Just when it seems that the Heffleys really will move, a new sequence of chaotic trouble and property destruction heralds a return to the status quo. Whew.
Readers can still rely on this series to bring laughs. (Graphic/fiction hybrid. 8-12)Pub Date: Nov. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4197-3903-3
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Amulet/Abrams
Review Posted Online: Nov. 18, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
However the compelling fitness of theme and event and the apt but unexpected imagery (the opening sentences compare the...
At a time when death has become an acceptable, even voguish subject in children's fiction, Natalie Babbitt comes through with a stylistic gem about living forever.
Protected Winnie, the ten-year-old heroine, is not immortal, but when she comes upon young Jesse Tuck drinking from a secret spring in her parents' woods, she finds herself involved with a family who, having innocently drunk the same water some 87 years earlier, haven't aged a moment since. Though the mood is delicate, there is no lack of action, with the Tucks (previously suspected of witchcraft) now pursued for kidnapping Winnie; Mae Tuck, the middle aged mother, striking and killing a stranger who is onto their secret and would sell the water; and Winnie taking Mae's place in prison so that the Tucks can get away before she is hanged from the neck until....? Though Babbitt makes the family a sad one, most of their reasons for discontent are circumstantial and there isn't a great deal of wisdom to be gleaned from their fate or Winnie's decision not to share it.
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1975
ISBN: 0312369816
Page Count: 164
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: April 13, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1975
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