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Library | Audience | Home Location | Material Type | Shelf Number | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Searching... Central | Kid/Juvenile | Open Stacks Fiction | Open Stacks Kids Book | WYMAN | Searching... Unknown |
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Reviews (4)
School Library Journal Review
Gr 5-7-Three new kids start sixth grade in Whispering Springs, WV, and quickly bond. Sophie is pressured at home to make friends quickly, so when snotty Melody offers her the chance to become a member of the Faith, Hope, and Charity Club, she is thrilled-until she is told to ``borrow'' a classmate's glass eye. YL's disc-jockey father has enrolled him in ballet school as preparation for football, and he dreads it. Harper is tired of constantly moving, and doesn't understand why her mother is so reluctant to help her with a family history project. While on a class trip to Washington, the three friends slip away to the Vietnam Memorial to find Harper's father's name. Stunned by its absence, she decides to solve the mystery of her past. The stories about the three main characters are told in alternating chapters, a technique that might put off unsophisticated readers. However, the plot elements will snare them. The novel is peopled with likable, well-drawn, clearly motivated characters, and dosed with just the right amount of humor and adolescent concerns. Wyman tackles tough issues-racism, sexism, bullying, and split families-in a gentle way. Children who want to be entertained will not be disappointed, and they may also find a new perspective with which to examine their world.-Cindy Darling Codell, Clark Middle School, Winchester, KY (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Horn Book Review
Harper, Y. L., and Sophie -- new students in a West Virginia sixth-grade class -- become friends and form their own club in disdain for the 'Faith, Hope, and Charity' club presided over by snobbish classmates. Some warm scenes and the tension generated when Harper discovers that her father did not die in the Vietnam War, as her mother has always told her, do not overcome the overly long novel's lack of focus. From HORN BOOK 1994, (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
Wyman's second is about survival, and about the trade-offs when some things are lost while others are found. Three likable but very different kids--YL, an African American boy; the overweight Sophie; free-spirit Harper--enter sixth grade in a small West Virginia town on the same mid-year day. While all three suffer social humiliations and malicious pranks, they become friends through sharing their problems, including a mystery concerning Harper's father. Meanwhile, their teacher reads a book about an Inuit girl who saves herself, her sister, and their dogs during a blizzard. At first, this story-within-a-story is distracting, but in the end both narratives become equally involving. The Inuit girl is saved, though her grandmother dies in the storm; the three friends survive sixth grade but lose Harper when she joins her newly found dad. The emotional turmoil of a move and its feelings of isolation are well realized in this bittersweet story. Though it's sometimes too complicated, readers are sure to relate to the predicaments of the well-developed main characters. (Fiction 9-12)
Booklist Review
Gr. 4-6. When three new students join Mrs. TenBroeck's sixth grade in a small West Virginia town, they have more fun with each other than with their classmates. A snobbish girls' club wants Sophie but requires unpleasant initiation tasks; Harper wants to know what her dad was like; and YL has a name he'll never reveal as well as a distracted mom back in Detroit. The best parts of the novel come as the class listens to the teacher read a story about an Inuit girl surviving adversity (a story that Wyman wrote for this book), and readers see the three new friends as survival artists in their own world. A portrait of a gifted teacher and a realistic look at intraclass rivalries, this is witty without being flip. ~--Mary Harris Veeder
