A moving quest of family, survival, and home.
When a Mexican family stops hearing from the eldest brother, working in the States, 12-year-old Mateo risks everything and runs away in search of Julian.
In this timely novel, Mateo leaves his home, Abuelita, Mami, and the youngest brother, Lucas, in the middle of the night—with no more than a backpack, notepad, pesos, and a little food and water—and heads north for Arkansas, Julian’s last known whereabouts. Injured and abandoned, Mateo meets Angel, a savvy, strong young girl. Though upon her introduction, Angel is far from feeble or fragile, as the story advances, her character loses the strength and depth she initially brings to the journey. Cognizant of the dangers before them, they swim the river into Texas undetected and proceed, often at odds while simultaneously entirely dependent on each other. The chapters toggle among Mateo’s narration, his journal entries, his memories, and dreams, which all hint at syncopated moments of magical realism, like so many Mexican tales. Two-time Newbery Honor winner Giff successfully delivers an accessibly fast-paced, novella-length adventure; moreover, its colorful, stunning cover will surely attract readers. Naturally there is Spanish punctuating the novel, though it’s minimal; Mateo’s commentary on his English lessons feels more like vocabulary building for native English speakers than the introductory vocabulary a native Spanish speaker would be learning.
A moving quest of family, survival, and home. (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Sept. 8, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-74482-9
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Wendy Lamb/Random
Review Posted Online: June 22, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2015
Readers can still rely on this series to bring laughs.
The Heffley family’s house undergoes a disastrous attempt at home improvement.
When Great Aunt Reba dies, she leaves some money to the family. Greg’s mom calls a family meeting to determine what to do with their share, proposing home improvements and then overruling the family’s cartoonish wish lists and instead pushing for an addition to the kitchen. Before bringing in the construction crew, the Heffleys attempt to do minor maintenance and repairs themselves—during which Greg fails at the work in various slapstick scenes. Once the professionals are brought in, the problems keep getting worse: angry neighbors, terrifying problems in walls, and—most serious—civil permitting issues that put the kibosh on what work’s been done. Left with only enough inheritance to patch and repair the exterior of the house—and with the school’s dismal standardized test scores as a final straw—Greg’s mom steers the family toward moving, opening up house-hunting and house-selling storylines (and devastating loyal Rowley, who doesn’t want to lose his best friend). While Greg’s positive about the move, he’s not completely uncaring about Rowley’s action. (And of course, Greg himself is not as unaffected as he wishes.) The gags include effectively placed callbacks to seemingly incidental events (the “stress lizard” brought in on testing day is particularly funny) and a lampoon of after-school-special–style problem books. Just when it seems that the Heffleys really will move, a new sequence of chaotic trouble and property destruction heralds a return to the status quo. Whew.
Readers can still rely on this series to bring laughs. (Graphic/fiction hybrid. 8-12)Pub Date: Nov. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4197-3903-3
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Amulet/Abrams
Review Posted Online: Nov. 18, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
Fast-paced and plot-driven.
In his latest, prolific author Gratz takes on Hitler’s Olympic Games.
When 13-year-old American gymnast Evie Harris arrives in Berlin to compete in the 1936 Olympic Games, she has one goal: stardom. If she can bring home a gold medal like her friend, the famous equestrian-turned-Hollywood-star Mary Brooks, she might be able to lift her family out of their Dust Bowl poverty. But someone slips a strange note under Evie’s door, and soon she’s dodging Heinz Fischer, the Hitler Youth member assigned to host her, and meeting strangers who want to make use of her gymnastic skills—to rob a bank. As the games progress, Evie begins to see the moral issues behind their sparkling facade—the antisemitism and racism inherent in Nazi ideology and the way Hitler is using the competition to support and promote these beliefs. And she also agrees to rob the bank. Gratz goes big on the Mission Impossible–style heist, which takes center stage over the actual competitions, other than Jesse Owens’ famous long jump. A lengthy and detailed author’s note provides valuable historical context, including places where Gratz adapted the facts for storytelling purposes (although there’s no mention of the fact that before 1952, Olympic equestrian sports were limited to male military officers). With an emphasis on the plot, many of the characters feel defined primarily by how they’re suffering under the Nazis, such as the fictional diver Ursula Diop, who was involuntarily sterilized for being biracial.
Fast-paced and plot-driven. (Historical fiction. 9-12)Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2025
ISBN: 9781338736106
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2025
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