"The popular writer uses examples from her novels and short stories as well as incidents from her own life to illustrate a sensible guide to writing, one adults might find as instructive as students in the upper grades. The title comes from Gene Fowler's instruction: "Writing is easy: all you do is sit staring at a blank sheet of paper until the drops of blood form on your forehead."
"NEVER judge a book by its blurb - at least in the teenage market, where it seems to be in publishers' interests to disguise good writing as rubbish. Take Deliver Us From Evie by M. E. Kerr (Viking, pounds 8.99) whose back cover breathlessly pants "When eighteen-year-old Evie falls in love with gorgeous Patsy Duff, her parents tell her 'it's just a phase'. But Evie has always known that she's a dyke." Difficult though it is to sympathise with a writer who uses initials (V. V. Pretentious) and whose last book was called Dinky Hocker Shoots Smack! M. E. Kerr deserves better. Set in farming country in the American Mid-West, Evie's story is told by her unjudgmental younger brother, and is less about Evie and Patsy's relationship (Queen Victoria would be none the wiser for reading it) than Evie's family's reaction to it. With sympathetic characters and balanced prose Kerr never sensationalises her subject but keeps the reader rapt. Don't expect much seasonal good cheer amongst teen fare."
"The cover picture of "Fell" shows a surrealistic, desolate landscape on which stand seven 7s and over which a young man in formal attire floats, one foot entangled in the green stem of a flower. Is this a fantasy, I wondered? But no. The flap copy calls it a love story/suspense novel, first in a series. As a longtime Kerr fan I could hardly wait to open the book and find out what those symbols represented.
....
If you're confused by the complex story line, so was I, at first. To Kerr's credit, clues are dropped throughout the book, though readers might not catch them on one reading. However, the story strains credulity and the Sevens plot complications seem largely to introduce the suicide, which one supposes will be the subject of the next book in the series.
Kerr fans will enjoy this book despite my criticisms because the cast of characters is interesting, Fell is very likable, and the dialogue is plentiful, bright, and often witty."
" Miss Kerr (a pseudonym) is pastmaster at what -- for want of a better label -- is called adolescent fiction. "Gentlehands" takes as its span that convenient period for the telescoping of the growing-up process in America: the long summer vacation. Boy [Buddy] meets girl "out of our class": older, richer but not more mature. He takes her to see not his cop father but his superior grandfather, who ran out on his wife and Buddy's mother when she was a child, and went back to Germany.
Grandfather is accused, in the local paper, of being an ex-concentration camp guard of exceptional sadism, whose nickname came from his playing of an aria from Tosca, "I Dolci Mani", to the inmates.
....
Miss Kerr is particularly good at the compulsions of youth: Buddy knows how he is behaving when he stands up his little brother at his girlfriend's whim, but he is not a prig; he tries to buy him off, lies, makes excuses, like the rest of us. She is good, too, as the terror of an irresponsible action that cannot be cut short; Buddy's drive home high on pot, but not too high to know he is not in control, is vividly well done. And the parents are neither saints nor sinners, sages nor fools: they are observed with perception, but not with the detached omniscience that turns too many adolescent heroes into wizened old men."
"Lang, a self-aware 17-year-old, is spending the summer in the very fashionable Hamptons. He and his mother are living in the caretaker's cottage of an estate belonging to a reclusive rock star, Ben Nevada. Lang becomes involved with a visiting French teen-ager and Nevada himself. Fast-paced and sophisticated summer reading."
" Trust M.E. Kerr (Deliver Us From Evie, 1994, etc.) to put a new twist on an old story: ''I know that I'd always think of it as the summer that I loved a girl,'' Lang, the narrator, concludes ruefully. But Lang is solidly and happily gay, although, unlike his lover, Alex, he can't quite bring himself to be public about it. He moves with his mother to the caretaker's cottage on a retired rock star's Long Island estate, to ''help out, hide out, cool out, come out.'' He finds himself saddled with an unwelcome duty when his employer enlists him as a ''safe'' chaperone for Huguette, a long-dead band member's daughter who has been hastily flown over from France to break up a teenage infatuation. Hanging out with Huguette, an Audrey Hepburn look-alike with cute, accented English, Lang not only gets a taste of life in a rarefied social stratum, but begins to develop strange -- for him -- feelings; meanwhile, as he nerves himself to come out to his school friends, he pines for Alex, and on their infrequent dates, not only gets a taste of gay society, but experiences the gamut of public reactions.
....
Written in Kerr's blithe style, this is an urbane story with a bit of an edge, a likably confused protagonist, and some deftly inserted information."
"YOUNG ADULTS, teenagers, whatever you want to call them ("older children" may be the best term) -- they're probably the hardest group of readers to snag, and the easiest to lose halfway through a book. Generally they're impatient, jittering to get on with their real lives. And the mere sound of an adult voice, even if it's only on paper, tends to make them sigh and roll their eyes.
The writer hoping to attract these readers has two choices. The first is to try to enter their world -- present it to them so vividly that they will sit up and take notice. The second is to pull them out of that world, using characters of the appropriate age but making no further allowances, trusting that effective writing and a strong plot alone will be enough to snare them.
....
M. E. Kerr has proved a good many times over (in books like Him She Loves? and Dinky Hocker Shoots Smack!) her skill in entering young people's worlds, but her latest offering takes a slightly more distant stance. I Stay Near You is a novel in the form of three stories. The first story, which is set in the 1940s, describes a love affair between the town's rich boy and a very poor, very strange girl named Mildred. The boy is killed in the Second World War and Mildred, who is pregnant with his child, marries someone else. In the second story, which takes place in the '60s, Mildred's son Vincent falls in love with an unsavory girl who eventually breaks his heart. And in the third story, Vincent's son Powell reflects upon his father -- now a self-centered, middle-aged rock star -- and comes to some conclusions about his own life.
An unsuitable romance is always interesting, and this one is no exception. But it's so thoroughly defeated -- and defeated so early in the book -- that you wonder if teenaged readers might drift away after the first of the stories. Moreover, there's something chilly and remote about the two lovers. As always, though, M.E. Kerr's crisp writing style is flawless, and she successfully avoids that gee-whiz tone so common to writers of young adult books."
"In several previous books, M. E. Kerr has shown an interest in the underlying passions of individuals, usually secondary characters, with physical or emotional idiosyncracies. In ''Little Little'' these characters take center stage as Miss Kerr investigates the relationship between three dwarfs: Sydney Cinnamon, an orphaned hump-backed 17-year-old who has achieved a certain fame as ''The Roach'' in commercials for an exterminating company; Little Little La Belle, also 17, the perfectly proportioned daughter of wealthy parents; and Knox Lionel (a.k.a. ''Opportunity'' Knox and the ''Little Lion''), a 20-year-old hustler and evangelical preacher who is going to be affianced to Little Little. The story revolves around Sydney's efforts to secure the affections of the pretty heiress despite her parents' opposition.
Sydney and Little Little share the narration in alternating chapters, a device Miss Kerr has employed before and which is nicely conducive to a tale of romance. And while this is essentially a love story, the author gently weaves into the plot the general anguish and specific problems intrinsically bound to a minority world. But the pain, however verbalized or demonstrated, remains implicit. The work goes beyond an account of ''what it's like to be a dwarf''; it remains a reality-based story of individuals.
Despite the first-person narrative, M.E. Kerr distances the reader from the work through limited character revelation, and her restraint discourages familiarity. In this way, she prevents the novel from becoming a shallow plea for tolerance. All these characters require is respect.
There is, of course, as in all of Miss Kerr's work, humor and an element of the absurd. Both Sydney's and Knox's occupations lend themselves to a controlled satire. Less restrained, however, is the author's portrayal of Little Little's parents; a well-meaning but rather stupid father, and a fluttering, silly mother who writes inane verse for the local newspaper and checks out other dwarfs to ascertain if they're ''p.f.'' -perfectly formed. In their persistent efforts to uncover euphemisms for everything from their daughter's condition to bodily functions, they move dangerously close to becoming caricatures.
There are other occasional problems. Every now and then one of the protagonists will toss out a vague, poorly disguised throwaway line that is riddled with portent and screams of significance. But for the most part, the author's tone throughout the work blends a matter-offact nonchalance with a wry, mildly sardonic humor that is poignant without being sentimental. In the end, the readers is presented with a set of engaging personalities, an unusual perspective, and an entertaining, tender romance that offers both technical strength and a low-key emotional tug."
"When Marijane Meaker, who writes under the name of M.E. Kerr, was growing up in a small upstate New York town, her mother missed no opportunity to warn her that ''there isn't a female comedian alive who's happy.'' Fortunately, she never paid her mother the slightest attention. She went right on being funny and, after establishing her career as a writer with a series of suspense novels under the pseudonym Vin Packer, she proceeded, as M.E. Kerr, to produce nine highly successful young adult novels about the heartbreaking comedy of American adolescence.
Now, in this autobiographical memoir, Miss Kerr unveils a deliciously wicked sense of humor, reminiscent in style, and occasionally in content, of Jessica Mitford's work. While still in high school in the early 1940's, Miss Kerr tells us, she contrived to pep up a deadly dull romance with the local funeral director's son by helping another couple to elope in the cutaway station wagon that normally carried floral tributes to grave-sites. Shipped off to a highly proper girls' boarding school in Virginia, she showed her rebellious nature by writing to Earl Browder, head of the American Communist Party, informing him that ''many of the girls were interested in joining,'' thus calling down on the school post office a flood of what the headmistress called ''tawdry'' mail.
....
These reminiscences are primarily addressed to fans of Miss Kerr's novels who will no doubt enjoy meeting the real-life models for many of her offbeat characters. (One is hardly surprised to learn that the truth is often more bizarre than fiction, but in this case it is usually more poignant as well since Miss Kerr freely admits that some of these individuals were the victims of her unstoppable writer's drive to know everyone's secrets.)
As for the rest of you, don't let the regrettable title put you off; this book offers a satisfying if brief encounter with a humorist whose delight in poking fun at the trappings of authority is unmarred by either self-hatred or pettiness toward others."
"M. E. Kerr has a genius for striding up on her readers' blind sides and delivering the unexpected. She was doing it as long ago as 1972 with "Dinky Hocker Shoots Smack," which had nothing to do with drugs. She's done it again in "Night Kites," her most important book.
It's about the rapport between two brothers separated by a 10-year age difference, and a secret. But it begins with the younger brother, 17-year-old Erick Rudd, in a situation familiar enough to lure the most traditional young reader.
....
There's enough for a novel here, but at the moment of his sexual awakening, Erick learns that the older brother he idolizes, Pete, is coming home to die, of AIDS.
This story stands beside Judith Guest's "Ordinary People," another chronicle of unqualified disaster striking a family dedicated to unexamined values and a respectable facade. " 'How many times have you heard Mom say we were the perfect family?' " Pete somberly asks Erick.
Too typically, the family has never acknowledged the son's homosexuality until he's dying. The parents struggle in greater pain than some young readers will notice, for they suffer the ultimate parental tragedy; they can preserve neither their illusions nor their son. But the burden of this beautiful book rests in the bonding between these brothers.
Erick finds he can't tell Pete about his life, "The little-brother-in-the-throes-of-first-passion bit, while (Pete) was trying not to puke after his weekly chemotherapy, writing his will, staffing an AIDS hotline in New York (on) weekends, listening to one horror story after the other."
But eventually, they manage to re-establish the old links between them and forge new ones for the time they have left.
Erick's story is dramatized, and Pete's is mainly preached, but then the author has a lot of hard information to convey to readers who will have heard little of it before.
Would the book have been stronger, more straightforward if the AIDS victim had been of high school age? Possibly. And harder to pull off, too. Adolescents are even quicker than the rest of us to practice their tolerance at a safe distance. Perhaps "Night Kites" will smooth the way for another novel that reaches young readers where they live.
The suggested reader age given is 12 and up. Way up, let's
hope. This is a novel to be shared with adults, with families
like the Rudds who have to face a tragedy that couldn't possibly
happen to people like them.
" As a young teen-ager," writes Edmund White, "I looked desperately for things to read . . . that might confirm an identity I was unhappily piecing together" ("Out of the Closet, Onto the Bookshelf," June 16). That situation has happily changed. Writers of adolescent literature, a genre that hardly existed when White was a student, have included gay characters in several recent books; a partial list would include a gay father in "Jack," by A. M. Homes, a gay uncle in "The Arizona Kid," by Ron Koertge, and a gay brother with AIDS in "Night Kites," by M. E. Kerr. In "Hey, Dollface," by Deborah Hautzig, and "Annie on My Mind," by Nancy Garden, the teen-age protagonists struggle to understand lesbian attractions to their friends.
These books can demonstrate to an anxious adolescent that he or she isn't "the only one," and, in classrooms where the word "faggot" is still used as an insult, they can show straight adolescents that homosexuality is an ordinary fact of life. Characters in these novels contend with confusion, ignorance and prejudice. In the context of a multicultural literature program, both straight and gay teen-agers can learn, over time, to appreciate difference in others."
In a novel set on the WWII homefront, Jubal Shoemaker and his family worship as Quakers in their small Pennsylvania town. Jubal's oldest brother Bud's decision to register as a conscientious objector reverberates throughout the town, as other families send their boys off to fight the war. When customers stop coming to the Shoemakers' department store and someone paints slurs on the store window, Jubal's father descends into bitter misery. One night, Jubal catches the vandal in the act.... [A]s in other works, the author presents complex moral issues without passing judgment, allowing readers to consider matters for themselves. The many voices in the novel offer various perspectives of the conflict, and Kerr evokes the wartime setting with numerous references to contemporary songs, films, and slogans; gas and food rationing; and entertainment for the servicemen at the "Side Door Canteen." Jubal's earnest quest to define himself is solidly placed within a year of turbulence for his family, a particular experience of the war infrequently portrayed. L.A.
As a Quaker during WWII, teenager Jubal Shoemaker is a pacifist: "If a war comes, I will do everything to oppose it... So help me God." The more he prays about it, the surer he is. When it's time for him to be conscripted, he intends to follow his older brother Bud as a conscientious objector. But it's hard in their small Pennsylvania town to be against the war when patriotism is fervent. ... The ideas are gripping, not only because Kerr is fair to all sides but also because the characters are complicated, arguing with themselves and each other: When it comes to killing civilians, aren't we as guilty as they are? Despite himself, Jubal cries when he hears the patriotic songs. His Quaker dad isn't nearly as strong a pacifist as his wife; the war breaks them both. And the fervent antiwar crusaders aren't particularly likable. The story's shocking ending says it all.-Hazel Rochman
The title is the usual witty one from Kerr, but otherwise this is a straightforward, serious work of historical fiction. It is set during WW II, in Pennsylvania, as a Quaker family faces the realities of being conscientious objectors. There are three sons in the family, and the youngest son, Jubal, tells the story. The oldest son, Bud, has chosen to be a pacifist to the ex-tent that he will have no part in the war effort, and he is put to work in a mental hospital where he gets no real salary for doing excruciatingly difficult work. He endures this, telling his brothers about the reality of the situation without complaining, but it means that back home their father's department store loses most of its business. Even in a town with Quakers and Mennonites, feelings run high against pacifists as other local boys are fighting and dying in the war. ... Jubal watches all this go on in his family over the course of the war, from 1942 to 1945, and he is concerned, but he is also somewhat obsessed by his relationship with Dana, a neighbor girl whose older brothers are fighting overseas. The families had been friends before the war divided them, but now Dana and Jubal have to sneak out to be together-they ride horses on Saturday afternoons at the farm where Jubal works. ... Kerr always makes her readers think seriously, and here she focuses on pacifism during a popular war, forcing readers to wonder what they would do when faced with evil. She conveys the bravery of those few who do stand firm as conscientious objectors, describing the harassment COs faced in WW lI-including assaults and economic ruin. The broth-ers-Bud, Tommy, and Jubalare memorable characters, each one believable and sympathetic. None is portrayed as saintly: each has plenty of human foibles, which makes the three all the more real. This is an unexpected book by Kerr; it tells an important story of adolescents struggling with their own weaknesses during difficult times. Claire Rosser, KLIATT
From Publishers Weekly, October 29, 2001 Even without the influence of recent events, Kerr's hard-hitting WWII novel would sweep
readers up in its urgency. Jubal Shoemaker, the 13-year-old youngest son of a Pennsylvania
Quaker family, admires his oldest brother, Bud, for adhering to his antiwar convictions and
registering as a conscientious objector despite ever-increasing hostility from neighbors in
Jubal's small town, from residents near the facilities where Bud is sent to work, and
even from some relatives. Aunt Lizzie, for example, married to a Jewish artist and living
in Greenwich Village, sends Bud terse notes like, "Kiss the Jews of Greece good-bye!" Kids
at Jubal's Quaker school wonder about the limits of pacifism: what if they had the opportunity
to take the life of Hitler, Mussolini or Tojo? Would it really be wrong to register as a
noncombatant serviceman and be a medic? As the war escalates, conflicting
opinions tug Jubal's family in different directions....Kerr does not shy away
from difficult questions, nor does she resolve them for readers. Instead, she pulls
the rug from under Jubal in a shocking climax, and the abruptness of the
denouement intensifies its impact. This morally challenging novel is as memorable
as any of Kerr's work.
Grade 3-6-"Good-bye Placido" is a cry the one-eyed Siamese cat has heard before as his cycle of adoption from and return to a shelter begins yet again. He leaves behind an assortment of animals, including Marshall, the king snake; Goldie, a Lab separated from her owners; Catherine, a retired greyhound; and Irving, an aging part-German shorthair pointer, all of whom offer an opinion on the difficult cat's chances of finding a permanent home. During the Christmas holidays, Placido surprises everyone by ingratiating himself with his new owners, a child performer and her widowed father, and settles in nicely on their sailboat; Catherine is adopted, and Goldie is reunited with her family, who also adopt Marshall, the snake who never knew his mother. Only Irving is left at Critters where he curls up contentedly on his cot with his cedar pillow. This light, upbeat tale reflects the hopes and dreams of discarded animals. Good and evil live side by side, from the malevolent dogcatcher, Percival Uttergone, to the dedicated volunteers who work at Critters. The talking animals are more developed than the humans, but it all adds up to an upbeat reading experience.
Pam Spencer Holley, Young Adult Literature Specialist, Virginia Beach, VA
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Gr. 4-6. The animals at Critters shelter and the humans who interact with them are the stars of this novel, and therein rests the problem. There are too many characters (one of whom changes names three times!) and too many story lines; more editing would have definitely helped. Too bad, because there are some very good things here, as well. Kids will respond to the book's humor and appealing talking animals--Marshall the cranky snake; Irving the patient mixed-breed dog who never gets adopted; Placido the Siamese cat who finally finds a home. The human characters are somewhat less successsful. The relationship between Jimmie and Sun Lily, two girls who adopt animals and become friends, is nice, but the story line about Jimmie's career in show business never rings true. In addition, Sun Lily has two mothers (in the roster of characters, both are simply identified as volunteers at Critters), an element that may puzzle some children. Kerr still writes better than most, so larger libraries will probably want this, warts and all. Ilene Cooper
Copyright ?American Library Association. All rights reserved
What do a retired race dog, a king snake, a one-eyed Siamese and a friendly yellow Lab have in common? All are abandoned or lost pets who have landed at Critters, an animal shelter in the Hamptons (NY), run by the compassionate Mrs. Splinter. Offering both animal, reptilian and human poinst of view, Kerr's (Slap Your Sides) light novel mixes some poignant moments with slapstick comedy. As Christmas approaches, Placido the cat gets adopted, and Catherine the greyhound goes home with a volunteer for the holidays. Soon after, Labrador Rex (alias Goldie) runs off from the shelter, not knowing that his beloved missing family is coming to fetch him. The furry friends find themselves in some dangerous predicaments (Placido falls into the ocean and the evil dogcatcher almost gets his paws on Rex), but things end well for al, including the brooding, left-behind snake, who is sure no human being will ever want him for a pet. The book's frequent shifts in focus and complicated web of subplots may overwhelm some youngsters. Even so, the members of Kerr's imaginative menagerie are sure to wiggle, wag and worm their way into readers' hearts. Ages 8-12 (Oct.)
Here's the book for readers who've wondered what goes on among the denizens of an animal shelter - and not the human ones. They're told that the animals, be they dogs, cats, iguanas, snakes, or whatever, speak to each other, in a presumably ur-animal tongue, and watch out for each other while the various breeds of dogs know to be wary of the town's dastardly, evil dogcatcher. Mostly, though, and heartbreakingly, they wait to be adopted. In Kerr's story, set in the Hamptons on Long Island, they await the Christmas and New Year's holidays, while one particular canine longs to find his owner. The creatures are appealing and have distinct personalities. Humans don't fare as well; most are uninteresting and not fully realized, and the subplot with the child actress/dancer seems superfluous (though she does adopt a really feisty cat whom no one had ever seemed to want). These critters (also the name of the shelter) and their antics should keep young animal lovers happy and occupied.
Kerr, M. E. Someone Like Summer. HarperTeen, 2007. 272p. $16.99. ISBN 978-0-06-114099-6.
For Annabel, it is love at first sight. Esteban is handsome, athletic, and talented. She follows him from the soccer field to the club where he sings nightly. At first, Esteban is shy around Annabel. After all, he works for her father's construction business. But Esteban and Annabel are soon together whenever they can find time to be alone. Annabel's father and her friends think that this relationship is doomed. So does Esteban's older sister and his friends. The romance is complicated even further by Esteban's status as an undocumented worker. Despite the fact that her father employs illegal workers, he is still adamant that Annabel have nothing to do with Esteban. There are others in town who believe that all the immigrants should be swept out of their housing and returned to their countries of origin. Never one to shy away from tough topics, Kerr tackles prejudice, racism, and immigration in her latest novel. Annabel and Esteban are contemporary Romeo and Juliet characters; their story destined to become a tragedy. In addition, Kerr explores the various feelings about the immigrants who have come to America in search of work. Their exploitation at the hands of employers and their mercy at the hands of unscrupulous business people fuel the despair that can turn quickly to anger. Rather than offering easy solutions, though, Kerr's novel is open-ended. Esteban and Annabel are separated. Hope, however, always holds out the promise that the two might be reunited in the future.-Teri S. Lesesne.
Kerr (Your Eyes in Stars) gives a sensitive rendering of a biracial romance in this timely novel about a white teen? infatuation with an illegal immigrant. Understated yet emotionally charged prose expresses 17-year-old Annabel Brown? initial attraction to Esteban Santiago as she watches him play soccer and listens to him sing at a local night club. Their first few encounters are blissful, but complications soon arise due to their families mutual disapproval. Esteban? older sister, Gioconda, calls Annabel a ?hite whore and Annabel? father, who runs a construction company, views Esteban with as little regard as he does other ?uchacho laborers, especially when Esteban bungles a roofing job when substituting for one of Mr. Brown? workers. Forbidden to date Esteban or even talk to him on the phone, Annabel meets him secretly, but as with most Romeo and Juliet-type tales, their relationship cannot withstand social pressures and prejudice. Showcasing the tension created by resentments and fear of that which is different, the author pointedly conveys the plight of immigrants and the ineffectiveness of government policies. Although Annabel is heartbroken when Esteban joins the army as a means to obtain a green card, she gains deep respect and affection for another culture and for new immigrants striving to attain the American dream. Ages 12-up. (July)
Rosalind Slaymaster has returned to her hometown of Serenity, PA with a chip on her shoulder "the size of Apollo 11." Now the richest woman in Bucks County, she's ruffling feathers by renovating the town's 150-year-old amusement park, under the the condition that it be renamed after her deceased father. After 16-year-old E.C. (Edgar Cayce) Tobbit (whose protect button "buzzed for deer done out of their woods by developers, dogs tied to trees under the hot sun... and occasionally for a two-footed wretch as well") and his mother dine with the wealthy widow, he takes Slaymaster's gawky, unpopular adoptive niece, Julie, under his wing and finds himself unwittingly drawn into her aunt's deeply troubled childhood. Kerr (Dinky Hocker Shoots Smack!; Deliver Us From Evie) has long championed the outsider in her novels and, in her latest, offers a level of depth and sophistication found in the best of her fiction. After E.C. introduces Julie to his newfound friend, the roguish ...Neal, the trio soon forms a tight bond. ... Told primarily in E.C.'s homespun first-person narrative, the novel breaks mid-story to Rosalind's ...childhood diary, illuminating the enigmatic character's motivation and her unseemly tie to her inanimate dummy, Peale - a gift from her dead husband. Kerr, with a masterful, invisible hand, quietly adds layers of meaning to a seductive, psychologically riveting story.
" This novel for readers aged 12 to 15 chronicles a fragile relationship between 16-year-old Opal Ringer, the daughter of a poor, devout Pentecostal preacher, and Jesse Pegler, also 16, the son of a successful television evangelist. M.E. Kerr ''neatly places an incipient romance against the backdrop of evangelism and allows that subject to permeate - but not overwhelm - her story,'' our reviewer, Marilyn Kaye, said."
Your Eyes in Stars by M. E. Kerr (Gr 8 Up):
From School Library Journal, January 2006:
"In 1934, teenaged Jessie lives in a small upstate New York town where her father is the warden in the same prison. Her mother is a bit of a social climber, while her father has allowed himself to become overly friendly with a prisoner, Slater, a young Southerner with a heartbreaking background and in a keen musical talent. Jessie is pleasantly surprised when the daughter of a German professor who has moved into the neighborhood makes direct appeals for friendship. So unfolds the first section of this deceptively straightforward but sophisticated and engrossing novel. Jessie's friendship with Elisa is interrupted when the Stadlers abruptly return to Germany...an event that happens at the same that Slater is killed in a situation that makes it appear that he murdered a local man. Jessie and Elisa correspond during the next few years, their letters - as well as those from their acquaintance - making up the latter portion of the novel. Years later, in 1946, Jessie learns what really happened to Elisa. Kerr weaves an authentic story in which characters can know only so much at any given moment of their lives, and actually misunderstand much of what they know. The period and the place are re-created with excellent detail. Kerr doesn't have to make Jessie pronounce the big questions because she does such a thorough job of showing that they should be every reader's questions: what is really going on, both under our noses and inside the lives of people we care about but cannot know completely?" - Francisca Goldsmith, Berkeley Public Library,CA
Your Eyes in Stars by M. E. Kerr (12+):
From Kirkus Reviews, January 1 ,2006:
"A broad-ranging, somewhat unfocused novel on a worthy topic - how small errors in judgment can snowball to disaster - by a YA master. Jessie Myrers, daughter of a small-town New York prison warden, is an outcast; her older brothe ignores her, her mother dislikes her and J.J. Joy and the local in-girls think she's tacky. When Elisa, a German whose father teaches at Cornell, comes to town, Jessie finds happiness in their friendship despite both their mothers' disapproval of foreigners. Together the girls conceive a temporary crush on Slater Carr, a prisoner lifer and gifted musician, whom Jessie's father allows special privileges. Carr escapes and accidentally kills J.J.'s father (just as he, ruined by the Depression, was about to commit suicide), which prompts Elisa's family to return to Hitler's Germany. The complicated plot swerves wildly, so many pieces converge that some feel fragmentary. Written predominantly from Jessie's point-of-view, the story switches to a third-person review of Slater's life, letters to Slater from an old friend, and then, in Part Two, letters back and forth from Germany. Finding a cohesive single voice to tell this story wouldn't have been easy, but would have made its impact stronger."
Your Eyes in Stars by M. E. Kerr:
Excerpt from Sun-Sentinel (Fort Lauderdale, Florida), January 10, 2006 Tuesday
Tales for young adults that will give you chills
by Sherri Winston
"Veteran author M.E. Kerr presents a fascinating array of characters in her latest novel. Not only is the bleak, almost colorless landscape an integral player in Kerr's book, but the era is as well.
Told from multiple viewpoints, we first meet Jessie Myrer as she begins a friendship with her new classmate, Elisa Stadler, from Germany. With the story set against the backdrop of the Depression, allusions to Hitler and war swell just below the surface.
Now add to that Jessie's fascination with murderers and gangsters, her father being a warden at the county's biggest landmark on Retribution Hill -- a prison -- and a killer allowed to play his bugle over the loudspeaker so the whole town can hear it and what you get is a slow-burn novel with explosive results."
Your Eyes in Stars by M. E. Kerr:
Excerpt from CHILDREN'S CORNER
By Mary Harris Russell. Mary Harris Russell, who teaches English at Indiana University Northwest, reviews children's books each week for the Tribune
Published January 8, 2006
"It's 1934. Jessie's father is warden of a prison in upstate New York. Most other places they've lived, that has made her family top of the social heap, but not here, and that's hard for her mother to bear. Jessie's father is sure that his new inmate, Slater Carr, will lead the prison band to a championship, because what else could he have to care about? Elisa, a German girl whose father is studying at nearby Cornell University, becomes Jessie's friend, and they share crushes on local boys and on gangster John Dillinger. When Elisa and her father return to Germany for her grandmother, Elisa and Jessie correspond. Nothing is as simple as it looks, and it takes years before the final truths emerge. M.E. Kerr does not let history override character de-velopment. Elisa and Jessie are believable high school freshmen."
Your Eyes in Stars by M. E. Kerr (12-17):
From Publishers Weekly, January 16, 2006
STARRED REVIEW: "Kerr's (Gentlehands ) eminently readable novel set during the Depression almost feels like two books in one. Narrated by 14-year-old Jessie Myrer, the daughter of a prison warden (she dubs him a "benevolent dictator"), the first part chronicles her blossoming friendship with a new neighbor, Elisa Stadler, whose family has moved from Germany to Cayuta, N.Y., for her father's professorship at Cornell. While Jessie shares with Elisa her obsession with outlaws (she has a poster of John Dillinger on her wall), Elisa tells her new American friend about "this new leader, Hitler, [who] was gaining popularity in Germany." As she has in the past, Kerr leavens the dark events of the era with humor. The teen protagonists become fixated on a new prisoner, Slater Carr, whose talents on the trumpet may well win the prison band their first Black Baa (the Bands Behind Bars Annual Award). But things go horribly awry one day, when Carr escapes and one citizen winds up dead, prompting Elisa's family's return to Europe. The balance of the novel unfolds through letters exchanged between the teens. Readers may feel they hardly recognize Elisa when she joins the League of German Girls, but the author delivers some surprising twists. Kerr explores issues of anti-Semitism, classism and capital punishment through the eyes of ordinary people, and demonstrates that taking a stand on the small things can mean the difference between justice and apathy."
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