Promise

May 15, 2015
When his father is released after serving eight years in prison for stealing, 11-year-old Kaden hopes it will be a new beginning. Brought up by Gram-his father's mother-in a cluster of rural cabins (a quirky setting that works), Kaden keeps to himself, spending his free time in an abandoned fire tower with Kubla, a semitame crow. But on the first day of middle school, he meets Yo-Yo, a new kid who delivers friendship to Kaden and a bit of humor to the story. After a few false starts, Kaden and his newly released father begin to form a faltering relationship, despite his father's sometimes implausibly temperamental behavior. But when Kaden discovers his father continues to steal, Kaden must make the hardest decision of his young life. While this story admirably delves into the hard questions of personal responsibility, it conveys its theme with little subtlety. Instead of allowing readers to figure things out for themselves, the text neatly interprets and sums up each action and exchange of dialogue. The supporting characters, with the exception of the delightful Yo-Yo, are one-dimensional. And although there are valuable messages here for young readers about making mature decisions, too many scenes that impart these messages seem gratuitous and pat, lacking a clear and forward-progressing relationship to the story as a whole. An earnest but unpolished story, it nevertheless stands out for its confrontation of a little-acknowledged subject. (Fiction. 8-10)

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July 1, 2015
Grades 4-6 The town of Promise is a tight-knit one, but 11-year-old Kaden has always been on the outside, with only a half-tame raven for a friend. He and his strict grandmother live simply just outside the town limits and keep to themselves, barely acknowledging their old family shame: Kaden's father has been in jail for theft most of the boy's life. When he is released from prison and returns to Promise, Kaden's father turns his son's life upside down. In this first novel, Young navigates important questions of morality and family carefully, if a bit heavy-handedly. Kaden's father is never sufficiently developed enough to really have an impact, and some of the grandmother's eccentricities are confusing. However, side characters add life to the storymost notably Kaden's boisterous new pal, Yo-Yo, and his even-keeled neighbor Emmett. A bold look at the little-discussed subject of the prison system and the stigma that surrounds the families of the incarcerated.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)