Bound To Stay Bound

Booklist - 03/15/2011 Calli Gold hasn’t yet found what her father calls her passion. Her brother is a star basketball player, and her sister attends endless skate-team practices, but Calli is less worried about this void than her parents are. A wise 11-year-old, she also perceives that her sister isn’t happy on the ice and that her father is overly involved in her brother’s games. Hurwitz’s engaging debut charts how Calli makes her family see an alternative to the rush-rush lifestyle they lead. The author has created an appealing narrator, who’s quiet, observant, and stuck in a family of louds. Calli quotes the exasperating things her parents say as they prod her through the family’s busy schedule and promote her involvement in one area or another. At the same time, she is drawn to help a second-grade boy who needs a good friend. Hurwitz nicely conveys the sense that it’s OK for reserved Calli to be loud sometimes—with outbursts that she didn’t plan and behavior she didn’t expect—and that families can be enriched by their younger members’ ideas. - Copyright 2011 Booklist.

Bulletin for the Center... - 05/01/2011 It’s go, go, go all the time in the Gold family (where “no Gold is average!”), but eleven-year-old Calli is increasingly aware that she’d like to stop, stop, stop. Lacking the clear competitive passions—and talents—of her older brother and sister, she’s tired of being pushed to excel at something, and she’s fed up with being overlooked and overshadowed as the quiet member of a loud family. When she does finally find an activity that brings her joy, connecting with a shy, awkward second-grader, her family’s indifference to her discovery is the last straw. Hurwitz offers a sympathetic and perceptive portrait not just of Calli but of the whole Gold family, skillfully enriching the picture so that what looks initially like a family of shallow success-chasers turns out to be a group of people trying to make life meaningful and eventually realizing that their usual method doesn’t always work. Though Calli tends to reflect her family’s priorities and therefore define herself by what she’s not, her narration carefully constructs her character positively, as she’s clearly more observant and thoughtful than the rest of the Golds and she’s got a nice touch of eye-rolling, age-appropriate wit (“My sister is way past being a drama queen. She’s more like a drama emperor”). It’s thoroughly credible that her finding her own way and communicating her needs to her parents is a bumpy, tantrum-studded process, and the way one family member’s push for change can affect the whole group is plausibly conveyed. Kids who are themselves feeling overshadowed by the more traditionally gifted will particularly applaud Calli’s finding of herself and achieving a new role in her family. DS - Copyright 2011 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois.

School Library Journal - 06/01/2011 Gr 4–6—Eleven-year-old Calli Gold is a quiet, perceptive child born into a family of overachievers. Her older sister is on an ice-skating team and her brother is a high school basketball star. Calli's parents expect their children to "be Gold" and realize their full potential, but Calli hasn't found her niche yet, and doesn't know if she has or even wants one. She tries to explain this to her parents, but to no avail, as they sign her up for class after class. In school her class has been paired with second graders in a Peer Helper Program and Calli chooses Noah Zullo as her partner—a new student who seems to have Asperger's syndrome. Calli slowly makes progress with Noah, patiently talking and interacting with him until he feels comfortable, and they are able to come up with a project for the classes' joint Friendship Fair. Still under pressure from her parents, Calli eventually triggers a confrontation that forces them to reexamine their expectations for her and her siblings and also their overscheduled life. This is a well-done first novel that clearly presents a young girl struggling to figure out just who she is and how she fits in her family. Readers will sympathize (and possibly identify) with Calli, and Hurwitz also does a good job revealing the adults' motivations.—Terrie Dorio, Santa Monica Public Library, CA - Copyright 2011 Publishers Weekly, Library Journal and/or School Library Journal used with permission.