By:
On:
In: Historical Fiction, Historical Fiction (YA), Middle Grade Reviews, Multicultural (YA), Realistic Fiction (YA), Young Adult Book Reviews
With: 0 Comments

Kin: Rooted in Hope by Carole Boston Weatherford is a powerful textual tribute to “the ancestors who carried us through” accented by scratchboard-like illustrations by Jeffery Boston Weatherford. In this verse novel, the Weatherfords conjure the voices of their ancestors and speak to them and through them with their art. Seeking answers to key questions: “At what age is hope born, when does resistance first rise up, and when do dreams wither” (22-23), the mother/son pair tells a moving story of their family tree. Their goal is to give voice to their African-American ancestors who were “marginalized, muted, or muzzled” as they tilled fields intoRead More →

By:
On:
In: General Book Reviews, Historical Fiction (YA), Multicultural (YA), Young Adult Book Reviews
With: 0 Comments

All You Have to Do by Autumn Allen invites readers to consider some important issues and to answer some key questions. Allen follows the lives of two black men: Kevin, an activist in 1968, and his nephew Gibran Wilson, a high school senior in 1995 attending Lakeside Academy in New York. Allen’s intergenerational story is about “Black people taking care of business—the business of and for Black people” (37). It shares the similarities in the fights both young men have in exercising control over their lives, politically, economically, and psychically. Through her two protagonists, Allen asks: Do we join the world with all its imperfectionsRead More →

By:
On:
In: General Book Reviews, Historical Fiction (YA), Multicultural (YA), Young Adult Book Reviews
With: 0 Comments

Jamie Jo Hoang writes about intergenerational trauma in her book My Father, the Panda Killer. Her focus is on the perilous journeys out of conflict that many took during the Vietnam War Era. Hoang tells her story with alternating perspectives—that of Phúc, who was born into wartime during the Vietnam War and that of Jane, Phúc’s daughter. As Jane struggles to understand her father’s anger and abuse, she searches for the source in memories, in family stories, and in history. Readers learn that Phúc’s soul lives in the rings of the Banyan tree where he escapes to play his bamboo flute. When he is 11,Read More →

By:
On:
In: General Book Reviews, Historical Fiction (YA), Multicultural (YA), Romance (YA), Young Adult Book Reviews
With: 0 Comments

An Earl’s daughter, Lady Ela Dalvi doesn’t fall from grace; she is shoved by her former best friend, Poppy Landers who concocts a tale that sullies Ela’s reputation. Vowing to get revenge, Ela invents a new personality and becomes Miss Lyra Whitley, an enigmatic heiress who plans to infiltrate the glittering ballrooms of London, 1817. After all, “money has a way of opening the tightest, most elite circles” (10), and the recipe for high society female accomplishment in the United Kingdom during the late Regency era and later were fortune, connections, beauty, and virtue. On this defiant journey across class boundaries, Lyra’s disguise seeks position,Read More →

By:
On:
In: General Book Reviews, Historical Fiction (YA), Mystery & Suspense (YA), Romance (YA), Young Adult Book Reviews
With: 0 Comments

Written in a fashion similar to that of a fractured fairy tale, Pride and Premeditation is a tongue-in-cheek retelling of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. Although Tirzah Price employs many of the same characters and even opens with a play on Austen’s original line, “It is a truth universally acknowledged that a brilliant idea, conceived and executed by a clever young woman, must be claimed by a man” (1), she takes other liberties. While Price makes an effort to stay true to the etiquette and customs of the early nineteenth century, Lizzie Bennet’s ambitions to become a barrister—or even a solicitor—would have been out ofRead More →

By:
On:
In: Historical Fiction (YA), Multicultural (YA), Young Adult Book Reviews
With: 0 Comments

Readers of Katherine Patterson will likely appreciate Yonder by Ali Standish. The community of Foggy Gap proves the world is a confusing place—with gaps in understanding and with clarity of vision required on subjects like justice, prejudice, war, and courage. Set in the early 1940s, Standish shares a perspective of what the years surrounding World War II may have been like in the United States. Her story suggests that the country’s role in WWII is more complicated than many of us are taught to believe, especially in the way in which news about Hitler’s Jewish extermination campaign was publicized or received limited coverage. For theRead More →

By:
On:
In: General Book Reviews, Historical Fiction (YA), Multicultural (YA), Young Adult Book Reviews
With: 0 Comments

Largely inspired by her father’s own story, Wai Chim writes Freedom Swimmer to capture a tumultuous time in China’s history. Set in Guangdong Province in 1968, the novel reveals the journey of Ming Hong who is orphaned at age eleven. For him, the past dances in dark shadows and whispers of loss and loneliness. Ming, who is shy and resigned to his fate, loves the ocean—its murmuring, its offer of freedom, and its ability to drown his fears. Swimming not only gives him peace and confidence but brings him closer to his father and the strength of his dream of reaching Hong Kong. At theRead More →

By:
On:
In: Action & Adventure (YA), General Book Reviews, Historical Fiction (YA), Multicultural (YA), Young Adult Book Reviews
With: 0 Comments

As The Llano Kid is making his way to California in Dead Man’s Gold by Paul K. Brown, the half-Cherokee, half-Irishman happens upon Jake Peters, who has been shot and left for dead in the Arizona desert. After making a promise to the dying man, Llano takes up temporary residence in Prescott with the intention of freeing Jake’s daughter, Melissa, from bondage because of her father’s debt. Because Llano imagines an awful existence for a young frontier girl who has been taken as collateral on an unpaid bank note, his moral compass won’t let him ride on. “Folks in these parts, they was downright brutalRead More →

By:
On:
In: Action & Adventure (YA), Historical Fiction (YA), Multicultural (YA), Young Adult Book Reviews
With: 0 Comments

Not just another Holocaust survivor’s story, Bluebird by Sharon Cameron is both fascinating and horrifying.  It prompts readers to consider along with Cameron’s protagonist: “Is this the world? Where nothing is fair? Where it is impossible not to cry? Where wars are not glorious or noble, just dirty and blood-soaked” (94)? It also prompts us to ask: Is it always better to know the past and the things that have happened? Cameron’s protagonist decides, “If you don’t know, then you can’t understand what justice is” (105). After experiencing the atrocities in Berlin during Hitler’s reign, Inge von Emmerich concludes that she has survived for aRead More →