Best friends Dini and Maddie and Bollywood movie star Dolly Singh, from Krishnaswami’s The Grand Plan to Fix Everything (2011), return for a breathless dance through Washington, D.C.
Dini’s visit from India, where she’s been living, back to Takoma Park, Md., reunites the sixth-graders. They plan to take part in the grand opening of the star’s latest film, part of an Indian festival at the Smithsonian. But this dance doesn’t progress smoothly: The flighty star has lost her passport; she wants an elephant for the festival parade; she needs rose-petal milkshakes and a really nice cake for her party. And there’s more. The caterers have canceled. Maddie hopes her new friend Brenna can be part of their performance. When Mini, a young elephant in the National Zoo, takes off down Connecticut Avenue, the tranquilizing dart meant for her hits Dolly’s husband. Jumping from one scene to another, the fast-paced, present-tense narrative conveys Dini’s jittery jet-lagged feeling as she struggles to choreograph her own steps and to make Dolly happy. Just as the star drops jewelry, the author flings pieces of plot everywhere, but she pulls it all back together in fine Bollywood style. Halpin’s grayscale illustrations (final art not seen) add flavor.
Bits of Indian culture and Bollywood drama add delicious undertones to this confection, a treat for middle-grade readers. (Fiction. 9-12)Pub Date: Aug. 13, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-4424-2328-2
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Atheneum
Review Posted Online: May 22, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2013
Categories: CHILDREN'S SOCIAL THEMES | CHILDREN'S ENTERTAINMENT & SPORTS
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BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The author of the Anastasia books as well as more serious fiction (Rabble Starkey, 1987) offers her first historical fiction—a story about the escape of the Jews from Denmark in 1943.
Five years younger than Lisa in Carol Matas' Lisa's War (1989), Annemarie Johansen has, at 10, known three years of Nazi occupation. Though ever cautious and fearful of the ubiquitous soldiers, she is largely unaware of the extent of the danger around her; the Resistance kept even its participants safer by telling them as little as possible, and Annemarie has never been told that her older sister Lise died in its service. When the Germans plan to round up the Jews, the Johansens take in Annemarie's friend, Ellen Rosen, and pretend she is their daughter; later, they travel to Uncle Hendrik's house on the coast, where the Rosens and other Jews are transported by fishing boat to Sweden. Apart from Lise's offstage death, there is little violence here; like Annemarie, the reader is protected from the full implications of events—but will be caught up in the suspense and menace of several encounters with soldiers and in Annemarie's courageous run as courier on the night of the escape. The book concludes with the Jews' return, after the war, to homes well kept for them by their neighbors.
A deftly told story that dramatizes how Danes appointed themselves bodyguards—not only for their king, who was in the habit of riding alone in Copenhagen, but for their Jews. (Historical fiction. 9-12)Pub Date: April 1, 1989
ISBN: 0547577095
Page Count: 156
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: Oct. 17, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1989
Categories: CHILDREN'S SOCIAL THEMES | CHILDREN'S HISTORICAL FICTION
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Two third-grade girls in California suffer the dehumanizing effects of racial segregation after the Japanese attack Pearl Harbor in 1942 in this moving story based on true events in the lives of Sylvia Mendez and Aki Munemitsu.
Japanese-American Aki and her family operate an asparagus farm in Westminster, Calif., until they are summarily uprooted and dispatched to an internment camp in Poston, Ariz., for the duration of World War II. As Aki endures the humiliation and deprivation of the hot, cramped barracks, she wonders if there’s “something wrong with being Japanese.” Sylvia’s Mexican-American family leases the Munemitsu farm. She expects to attend the local school but faces disappointment when authorities assign her to a separate, second-rate school for Mexican kids. In response, Sylvia’s father brings a legal action against the school district arguing against segregation in what eventually becomes a successful landmark case. Their lives intersect after Sylvia finds Aki’s doll, meets her in Poston and sends her letters. Working with material from interviews, Conkling alternates between Aki and Sylvia’s stories, telling them in the third person from the war’s start in 1942 through its end in 1945, with an epilogue updating Sylvia’s story to 1955.Pub Date: July 12, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-58246-337-7
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Tricycle
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2011
Categories: CHILDREN'S SOCIAL THEMES | CHILDREN'S HISTORICAL FICTION
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