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JASMINE IS HAUNTED

A sincere, spooky, supernatural mystery with Latine roots that explores powerful bonds.

Can a young teen learn to communicate with the spirit who’s haunting her?

Ever since Papi died, eighth grader Jasmine Garza, who’s Mexican American, has been haunted with poltergeistlike activity that has driven her and Mami to repeatedly move around California. At Jasmine’s latest school, she decides to follow Mami’s suggestion to try to make a friend. Jasmine, who’s queer, accepts English teacher Mx. Chen’s invitation to check out the school’s GSA, or Gay Supernatural Alliance. There she meets Bea Veracruz and Jorge Barrera. Once they learn Jasmine is being haunted, the pair dive into helping her rid herself of the spirit—but the spirit’s activity only increases. Can Jasmine make contact before the spirit’s growing darkness engulfs the whole neighborhood? At the center of this heartfelt ghost story swirls the lingering grief of those the dead leave behind, and the signal importance of family, friends, and community in ameliorating that grief. Jasmine’s community is vibrant, queernormative, and multiethnic, with strong Latine representation. Spanish phrases add texture and are easily comprehensible for those who don’t know the language. The complicated, layered characters all hold their own secrets, just as Jasmine holds hers—and they find the same freedom she does in letting those secrets go. The book’s only drawback is some occasional unclear phrasing that at times interferes with tracking the action.

A sincere, spooky, supernatural mystery with Latine roots that explores powerful bonds. (Supernatural. 9-13)

Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2024

ISBN: 9781250337290

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Starscape/Tor

Review Posted Online: Aug. 3, 2024

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2024

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THE SCHOOL FOR GOOD AND EVIL

From the School for Good and Evil series , Vol. 1

Rich and strange (and kitted out with an eye-catching cover), but stronger in the set pieces than the internal logic.

Chainani works an elaborate sea change akin to Gregory Maguire’s Wicked (1995), though he leaves the waters muddied.

Every four years, two children, one regarded as particularly nice and the other particularly nasty, are snatched from the village of Gavaldon by the shadowy School Master to attend the divided titular school. Those who survive to graduate become major or minor characters in fairy tales. When it happens to sweet, Disney princess–like Sophie and  her friend Agatha, plain of features, sour of disposition and low of self-esteem, they are both horrified to discover that they’ve been dropped not where they expect but at Evil and at Good respectively. Gradually—too gradually, as the author strings out hundreds of pages of Hogwarts-style pranks, classroom mishaps and competitions both academic and romantic—it becomes clear that the placement wasn’t a mistake at all. Growing into their true natures amid revelations and marked physical changes, the two spark escalating rivalry between the wings of the school. This leads up to a vicious climactic fight that sees Good and Evil repeatedly switching sides. At this point, readers are likely to feel suddenly left behind, as, thanks to summary deus ex machina resolutions, everything turns out swell(ish).

Rich and strange (and kitted out with an eye-catching cover), but stronger in the set pieces than the internal logic. (Fantasy. 11-13)

Pub Date: May 14, 2013

ISBN: 978-0-06-210489-2

Page Count: 496

Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: Feb. 12, 2013

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2013

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HOLES

Good Guys and Bad get just deserts in the end, and Stanley gets plenty of opportunities to display pluck and valor in this...

Sentenced to a brutal juvenile detention camp for a crime he didn't commit, a wimpy teenager turns four generations of bad family luck around in this sunburnt tale of courage, obsession, and buried treasure from Sachar (Wayside School Gets a Little Stranger, 1995, etc.).

Driven mad by the murder of her black beau, a schoolteacher turns on the once-friendly, verdant town of Green Lake, Texas, becomes feared bandit Kissin' Kate Barlow, and dies, laughing, without revealing where she buried her stash. A century of rainless years later, lake and town are memories—but, with the involuntary help of gangs of juvenile offenders, the last descendant of the last residents is still digging. Enter Stanley Yelnats IV, great-grandson of one of Kissin' Kate's victims and the latest to fall to the family curse of being in the wrong place at the wrong time; under the direction of The Warden, a woman with rattlesnake venom polish on her long nails, Stanley and each of his fellow inmates dig a hole a day in the rock-hard lake bed. Weeks of punishing labor later, Stanley digs up a clue, but is canny enough to conceal the information of which hole it came from. Through flashbacks, Sachar weaves a complex net of hidden relationships and well-timed revelations as he puts his slightly larger-than-life characters under a sun so punishing that readers will be reaching for water bottles.

Good Guys and Bad get just deserts in the end, and Stanley gets plenty of opportunities to display pluck and valor in this rugged, engrossing adventure. (Fiction. 9-13)

Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998

ISBN: 978-0-374-33265-5

Page Count: 233

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2000

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