Rustle up a feisty, independent 16-year-old-girl named Arley who runs a rundown boarding house for three oddball, panned-out gold miners; a stranger dressed in black who rides into town on a black horse; a silver-tongued city slicker who offers to pay big bucks for tapped-out mines; a handsome newspaper editor wooed, to Arley’s chagrin, by prissy, pretty Lacey dressed in dimity and lace gloves; and a baker named Wing Lee, known for his Chinese medicinal teas. Plunk them all down in a grubby down-on-its-luck mining town in Colorado in 1888, add a sassy woman saloon keeper and an abandoned mail-order bride, and you’ve got one heck of a rousing “oater.” Packed with quirky characters, a villain or two, unlikely romances and likable, spunky gals (minus one) as sharp as six-shooters, this wallop of a tale is plotted with pitfalls, petticoats, poison and pistols, but glints with the golden prospect of treasure. Twenty-four carat fun. (Historical fiction. 10-14)
Pub Date: Aug. 10, 2006
ISBN: 0-15-205706-4
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2006
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Sofia, growing up in an urban Latino neighborhood in McAllen, Texas, has a chance to attend an expensive boarding school in Austin on scholarship. Like her father, Sofia lives the life of the mind, rich with story and possibility. How can she convince her mother to let her take this opportunity? By learning to dance and showing her that she can leave home and still learn to become a good comadre. Canales, the author of the story collection Orange Candy Slices and Other Secret Tales (2001), is a graduate of Harvard Law School, suggesting that Sofia’s story at least closely parallels her own. She is an accomplished storyteller, though not yet, perhaps, a successful novelist. The episodic narrative has disconcerting leaps in time at the beginning, and a sense of completion, or a moral displayed, at several points throughout—all lacking the tension to carry the reader forward. This said, the characters and setting are so real to life that readers who connect with Sofia at the start will find many riches here, from a perspective that is still hard to find in youth literature. (Fiction. 10-14)
Pub Date: Aug. 9, 2005
ISBN: 0-385-74674-1
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Wendy Lamb/Random
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2005
Categories: TEENS & YOUNG ADULT FICTION | TEENS & YOUNG ADULT FAMILY
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BOOK REVIEW
After Hitler appoints Bruno’s father commandant of Auschwitz, Bruno (nine) is unhappy with his new surroundings compared to the luxury of his home in Berlin.
The literal-minded Bruno, with amazingly little political and social awareness, never gains comprehension of the prisoners (all in “striped pajamas”) or the malignant nature of the death camp. He overcomes loneliness and isolation only when he discovers another boy, Shmuel, on the other side of the camp’s fence. For months, the two meet, becoming secret best friends even though they can never play together. Although Bruno’s family corrects him, he childishly calls the camp “Out-With” and the Fuhrer “Fury.” As a literary device, it could be said to be credibly rooted in Bruno’s consistent, guileless characterization, though it’s difficult to believe in reality. The tragic story’s point of view is unique: the corrosive effect of brutality on Nazi family life as seen through the eyes of a naïf. Some will believe that the fable form, in which the illogical may serve the objective of moral instruction, succeeds in Boyne’s narrative; others will believe it was the wrong choice.
Certain to provoke controversy and difficult to see as a book for children, who could easily miss the painful point. (Fiction. 12-14)Pub Date: Sept. 12, 2006
ISBN: 0-385-75106-0
Page Count: 224
Publisher: David Fickling/Random
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2006
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