March 03, 2005
YA27 & 28: Buried Onions and Whirligig
Buried Onions
by Gary Soto
Harper Collins, 1997
149 pages
Nineteen year old Eddie lives in Fresno, has dropped out of school where he was supposed to be studying air conditioners, and just wants to escape from his world of gangs and violence and keep a job, put food on the table and lead a normal life. Try as he might to stay out of the trouble around him, breaking free seems impossibly hard.
Booklist explains, "The 'buried onions,' which Eddie imagines as the underground source for the world's tears, pervade the tone and plot, but the unvarnished depiction of depressed and depressing barrio life is as important as the positive images of Latinos Soto has created in his other works." PW writes, "This bleak, claustrophobic novel perfectly captures the cyclical despair of its [19-year-old, Hispanic protagonist]." School Library Journal writes that "Soto's descriptions are poetic, and he creates deep feelings of heat and despair. A powerful and thought-provoking read."
Ages 12+, Grade 9+
Whirligig
by Paul Fleischman
Dell Laurel-Left, New York: 1998
This one's probably going on the list of my favorites of the semester.
In Cat's Cradle, Vonneget wrote, "If you find your life tangled up with somebody else's life for no very logical reasons that person may be a member of your karass." Brent Bishop had read that book in English class and the term popped into his mind when sitting down to a game of Go at a shared campsite with a cyclist traveling from British Columbia. Your friends and family aren't part of your karass, he muses. You can't choose its members, and might never know who was in it or what its purpose was. Brent realizes that he is connected to the girl whose life he ended when driving drunk. And he realizes that everything one does -- good bad and indifferent -- sends a wave rolling out of sight, touching other lives, bringing some people together, tearing others apart. The girl's mother has asked him to travel to the four corners of the country and build whirligigs of a girl that looks like her so that people all over the country can receive joy from her even though she's gone. This is a novel connections and consequences, alternating between Brent's story and those of characters whose own lives are set in motion by his wind toys, long after he's passed through.
• A New York Times Notable Book of the Year
• An ALA Best Book for Young Adults
• A School Library Journal Best Book of the Year
• A Booklist Books for Youth Editors’ Choice
• A Publishers Weekly Best Book