This take of friendship, acceptance and empowerment is a must read for younger teens. Nolan does a brilliant job of helping readers understand the complexities, strengths and flaws within us all. In the end readers will certainly go away feeling a little inspiration to be the change they want to see. ( )

Shades of To Kill a Mockingbird in this fabulous recreation of the confusion of ideas during the time sixites in America. Esther is just on the edge of leaving childhood but is pushed into it by the events of the summer when King-Roy comes to stay with her family. He makes her understand what it is like to not be white - she works to make all her family understand this as well. I never really understood about Malcolm X and his desire for a rapid and violent grab for rights as against Martin Luther King Jr's push for nonviolence. Han Nolan writes about many situations like this in different historical times - she pushes the reader into situations they didn't live through, but she makes you feel what it was like. ( )

A Summer of Kings

A Summer of Kings is a novel by Han Nolan. It is a well-detailed account of one girl’s struggle with segregation in the 1960s. This girl is white, her name is Esther, and she feels that she is the misfit of the family because she is not very talented with anything, yet her whole family is famous for performing. She also only has one friend, until an African American teenager named King-Roy moves in. He presents many new thoughts and ideas to Esther about racial prejudice and how he has now turned away from nonviolence. Will Esther be able to set things straight with her family or King-Roy? ( )

An excellent story about the summer leading up to the March in Washington DC in 1963. Esther Young , a 14 year old girl finds her voice when she becomes friends with King-Roy who comes to live in her family. ( )