A nicely balanced, believable and interesting view into adolescence, sex education and the power of faith.
A 14-year-old girl tries to follow her Catholic faith but wants to get her first kiss too.
Gloria Jean likes Connor, but on her first date with him she has a bout of the Troubles, an ailment that requires embarrassing emergency trips to the bathroom at awkward times. Connor’s not the only boy around, though; she meets another boy, Ian, in her Confirmation classes. In fact, she learns more about the ethics of kissing from her Confirmation classes than from the sex-ed class she takes at school. She goes through a minor rebellion when she learns that her Troubles are caused by celiac disease, which means that she will no longer be able to take the host in Communion. Wondering why the church requires wheat to be used in the host, she investigates. Even as Gloria Jean breaks a few rules in her anger and frustration, she nevertheless comes across as a basically good and sincere girl. Leigh titles each chapter with an amusing “Commandment” for kissing and writes convincingly from inside the head of her main character, who comes across as a fully realized adolescent. She presents a credible portrait of teen friendships and their angst over romance.
A nicely balanced, believable and interesting view into adolescence, sex education and the power of faith. (Fiction. 11-14)Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-8198-7491-7
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Pauline Teen
Review Posted Online: Nov. 30, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2013
Ghostwritten for a fictional 13-year-old character on the ABC Family network show Secret Life of the American Teenager, this September-to-August journal recaps the first season and part of the second—from 15-year-old sister Amy’s revelation that she’s pregnant through her parents’ divorce and the news that her mother herself is expecting. In the snarky tone she generally takes onscreen, narrator Ashley relates events from her own point of view and elaborates on them in long, wordy entries replete with adolescent self-assurance. Of a run-in with the school principal, for instance: “I think the real reason I got into trouble was because I expressed my individuality. It tends to scare authority figures when someone my age does that.” This “enhanced” e-book includes 10 brief video clips embedded in the general vicinity of their relevant passages. There is also a closing page of links to expedite the posting of reader ratings and reviews. Aside from a pair of footnotes pushed to a screen at the end, far away from their original contexts, the translation to digital format works seamlessly for reading/viewing in either single-page/portrait or double-page/landscape orientation. There’s enough standard-issue teen and domestic drama here to keep fans of such fare reading, but devotees of the show may be disappointed at the lack of significant new content, either in the narrative itself or in the e-book’s media features. (Fiction. 11-13)
Pub Date: June 22, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-4013-9596-4
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Disney-Hyperion
Review Posted Online: April 4, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2011
Unfortunate Events galore, served with relish.
The creator of such picture books as Frank Was a Monster Who Wanted to Dance (1999) and Three Nasty Gnarlies (2003) dishes up a first novel seasoned with the same delightfully twisted, ghoulish sensibility.
Immediately upon arriving in Awkward Falls, a small Manitoba town known for its canned sauerkraut and its Asylum for the Dangerously Insane (“both,” notes the narrator, “to be avoided at all costs, as one was likely to cause gas, and the other, death.”), 12-year-old Josephine meets agemate Thaddeus Hibble. Thaddeus is a scientific genius who has lived alone since infancy on an all–junk-food diet supplied by a robot butler and paid for by re-animating the dead pets of local matrons. Together the two are plunged into personal danger and worse at the clutching hands of hunchbacked lunatic cannibal Fetid Stenchley, former lab assistant and Asylum escapee. With aid from a supporting cast of colorful locals, a half-rotted corpse brought back to partial life and a ravening herd of chimerical monsters created in a secret biotechnology lab, Graves crafts a quick-moving plot composed of macabre twists. These are made all the ickier for being presented in significant part from Stenchley’s point of view. Wordless opening and closing sequences, plus a handful of interior illustrations, both fill in background detail and intensify the overall macabre atmosphere. The central characters receive just, if, under the circumstances, not necessarily final deserts.
Unfortunate Events galore, served with relish. (finished illustrations not seen) (Melodrama. 11-13)Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-8118-7814-2
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Chronicle Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2011
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