Engaging, if not essential.
Eight teens’ fates intertwine and recombine in the aftermath of a prank gone very wrong.
The constellation of characters is best imagined as a nucleus of two—the beautiful, domineering and troubled athletic couple Brendan and Emma—surrounded by an outer ring of friends, then two farther-off characters. The outer ring comprises sad stoner Felix and camera-toting Maxie, back in Illinois after four years in Colorado, along with golden girl Chloe and her earnest boyfriend, Anil. It is then connected more loosely to Emma’s thoughtful younger sister, Faith, and Walter, whose isolation and tenuous grasp on reality plays a pivotal role. After an unsatisfying, awkward stop at an alcohol-soaked end-of-summer bash, Chloe suggests a visit to the local “ghost house,” a seemingly abandoned property on the edge of the local cemetery. Chloe and Emma creep up on the porch, knocking over rose bushes as they go. The girls’ act of trespassing combines with Brendan’s drunkenness and bravado to set off a chain reaction that leads to multiple shootings and other serious injuries, which in turn lead to varying degrees of recovery and, ultimately, reflection. A novel in verse with a large cast of rather two-dimensional characters facing the consequences of their actions is nothing new, but Pattou keeps the pacing brisk enough to make this a decent page-turner.
Engaging, if not essential. (Verse/fiction. 13-15)Pub Date: Aug. 19, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4778-4774-9
Page Count: 392
Publisher: Skyscape
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2014
Refreshing and moving: avoids easy answers and saviors from the outside.
From Sudan to Maine, in free verse.
It's 1999 in Juba, and the second Sudanese civil war is in full swing. Viola is a Bari girl, and she lives every day in fear of the government soldiers occupying her town. In brief free-verse chapters, Viola makes Juba real: the dusty soil, the memories of sweetened condensed milk, the afternoons Viola spends braiding her cousin's hair. But there is more to Juba than family and hunger; there are the soldiers, and the danger, and the horrifying interactions with soldiers that Viola doesn't describe but only lets the reader infer. As soon as possible, Viola's mother takes the family to Cairo and then to Portland, Maine—but they won't all make it. First one and then another family member is brought down by the devastating war and famine. After such a journey, the culture shock in Portland is unsurprisingly overwhelming. "Portland to New York: 234 miles, / New York to Cairo: 5,621 miles, / Cairo to Juba: 1,730 miles." Viola tries to become an American girl, with some help from her Sudanese friends, a nice American boy and the requisite excellent teacher. But her mother, like the rest of the Sudanese elders, wants to run her home as if she were back in Juba, and the inevitable conflict is heartbreaking.
Refreshing and moving: avoids easy answers and saviors from the outside. (historical note) (Fiction. 13-15)Pub Date: May 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-7614-6267-5
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Marshall Cavendish
Review Posted Online: May 1, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2012
Lightweight fluff in the Chris Lynch/Chris Crutcher mode, if that's possible
Fraud pays.
“Pohi” seems like a great last name for a fictional high-school applicant invented in an International House of Pancakes: IHOP, Pohi, see? It's a a lark for Bobby and his friends, sitting there surrounded by all those privileged Whitestone Prep kids, to fill out a Whitestone application for "Rowan Pohi," Boy Scout, National Honor Society inductee, soup-kitchen volunteer and football player. But when "Rowan" gets accepted to Whitestone, Bobby takes a good hard look at his wrong-side-of-the-tracks life and realizes this could be the opportunity of a lifetime. Whitestone's teachers and facilities are miles away from those of Bobby's crappy public high school, and of course there's the girls. Bobby almost immediately falls for Heather, "a study in whiteness: white T-shirt, white shorts, white teeth, blonde hair. And long legs." Bobby has antagonists both in and out of school, but his ultimate success at Whitestone seems undeserved; the class inequities of the system are less important to the Whitestone decision-makers than the fact that Bobby’s a nice guy with a tragic back story. A recurring evocation of faux–Native American stories, culminating in a 5-year-old's assertion that "[b]eing Spider-Man is way cooler than being an Indian," will insult Native (and other) readers.
Lightweight fluff in the Chris Lynch/Chris Crutcher mode, if that's possible . (Fiction. 13-15)Pub Date: Nov. 14, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-547-57208-6
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Clarion Books
Review Posted Online: Sept. 27, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2011
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