Kendra

by Coe Booth

Overview

The acclaimed author of TYRELL returns to PUSH with a striking novel about a mother and daughter who are only fourteen years apart, but need to learn to understand each other before it's too late.Kendra's mom, Renee, had her when she was only 14 years old. Renee and her mom made a deal -- Renee could get an education, and Kendra would live with her grandmother. But now Renee's out of grad school and Kendra's in high school ... and getting into some trouble herself. Kendra's grandmother lays down the law: It's time for Renee to take care of her daughter. Kendra wants this badly -- even though Renee keeps disappointing her. Being a mother isn't easy, but being a daughter can be just as hard. Now it's up to Kendra and Renee to make it work.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780545231756
Publisher:	Scholastic, Inc.
Publication date:	01/01/2010
Sold by:	Scholastic, Inc.
Format:	eBook
Pages:	304
Lexile:	770L (what's this?)
File size:	462 KB
Age Range:	14 - 18 Years

About the Author

Coe Booth is a graduate of The New School's Writing for Children MFA program, and a winner of the LA Times Book Prize for Young Adult Fiction. She is the author of Tyrell and Kendra, and was born and still lives in the Bronx.

Editorial Reviews

Gr 9 Up

Growing up with her grandmother in Bronxwood, 14-year-old Kendra Williamson is waiting for Renée, her 28-year-old mom, to finish school so they can get their own place. Kendra can't help but feel abandoned when her mother gets her PhD at Princeton and then moves to a studio apartment in Harlem, once again leaving her daughter behind. When her grandmother's restrictive rules, her crush's physical attention, and her friend's self-absorption become overwhelming, Kendra gets her chance to live with her mother and learn whether Renée can be a true parent. Booth has a talent for emotional honesty. When Kendra confronts her mother about her previous choices and learns that, if she could change the past, she would not keep Kendra, the feelings of abandonment and betrayal radiate from the page. The convoluted but redeeming friendship between Kendra and her best friend and aunt, Adonna, resonates with heartbreak and honesty. Teens will appreciate Kendra's internal justification monologues, especially in relation to her Nana; Booth balances that self-examination with street fights to further engage her audience. Adults act as fully realized characters, serving as disciplinarians and mentors, not moralizing preachers. Kendra's quick acquiescence to anal sex seems to be too fast, though this and all other sex scenes are neither graphic nor gratuitous. From Bronx blocks to Harlem hangouts, Booth delivers dynamic characters and an engaging story.-Chris Shoemaker, New York Public Library

School Library Journal

Kendra, a thoughtful, introspective teen, is more into theatrical design than getting into trouble. Even so, Grandmother Nana is very strict and dislikes Kendra's sassy best friend Adonna—who just happens to be her aunt. The only daughter of teenage parents, Kendra often dreams about her career-driven mother Renée's finishing her doctorate and rescuing her from Nana's rules. When Kendra finds herself attracted to Adonna's crush Nashawn and then becomes sexually active, her relationships and her life change forever. While Kendra's inner dialogue and feelings draw the reader into the story, the intimate episodes with Nashawn are vague and sudden, and her rationale for getting involved with him seems out of character. Thus, Kendra's tale is uneven, with a clear and honest voice in the first half, followed by an implausible trajectory to the end. Moreover, the central conflicts of the story—Kendra's relationships with her mother and grandmother—are rushed to a conclusion, subsumed beneath a typical urban teen romance. The powerful beginning nevertheless signals Booth as a talent to watch. (Fiction. 12 & up)

Kirkus Reviews