Annal:2002 Golden Kite Fiction Award
From AwardAnnals
Results of the Golden Kite Fiction Award in the year 2002. For a ranked list of books, try an honor roll:
- 2002 Golden Kite-fiction winner
- Score: 10.52
Mardi was born in New York, but her parents sent her to Haiti to be raised in her grandmother’s house while they worked. When a coup d’état means 12-year-old Mardi and her sister must flee, they suddenly arrive in Brooklyn to live with parents they hardly know. Now it’s two years later. Mardi has adapted to her new life, while savoring sweet memories of her home in Haiti. But she is also haunted by her secret: a soldier raped her when she fled. This ambitious first novel is an insightful story of how family love and support can heal and help us move from world to world.
- 2002 Golden Kite-fiction honor
- Score: 6.52
Chad blames his grandfather Jeep and his older sister, Julia, for the death of his dog last fall. Now, as an empty summer yawns before him, Chad still isn’t speaking to Jeep, he avoids Julia, and he does his best to ignore the rest of the family, especially the new dog, Queenie. But on this quiet Vermont hillside there’s no one but family, nothing to fill the long days ahead.
Then a new neighbor, David Burton, moves in down the hill. David is a shaper, a dog trainer who shapes animals’ behavior using positive reinforcement. He needs an assistant, and he offers Chad the job. David also has a daughter, Louise beautiful, feisty, a dancer - who’s only a year older than Chad. Suddenly Chad’s life, which had seemed simple if painful, is terribly, wonderfully, confusingly complicated…
Chad uses Queenie to learn David’s techniques - but who is being shaped here, Queenie, or Chad himself? And can Chad’s new knowledge help him heal and find a place in his strong-willed, volatile family?
