A lovely, lilting bildungsroman duet in verse.
Over a summer in Mexico between middle and high school, two California teens are forced to disconnect their devices and plug into the real world.
Elio, who’s been “trying to hide / behind gaming,” and Celi, whose social media addiction is damaging her mental health and physical safety (she’s “gone viral for twerking”), can’t imagine life without screens. When Mima and Papi tell Celi she’s leaving Oakland for rural Atoyac, she feels her world crash “against itself / like a lost bird into a wall.” Moms and Pops tell Mexican American Elio that he’ll be working to restore a damaged habitat in Atoyac, along with his friend Paco. Celi, who’s Mexican American and Puerto Rican, goes to live with her tías, learning to practice traditional medicine. When the two young teens’ paths finally cross, what seemed like a punishment transforms into an opportunity for romance, healing, and cultural exploration. Slowly learning to care for themselves and others, they unearth their true selves and reconnect to homeland, community, and nature. This stand-alone work follows characters readers met in The Moon Within (2019) and Ultraviolet (2024). Their distinct, realistic voices harmonize to form a powerful contemporary coming-of-age story of navigating digital detox, puberty, emotional growth, and gender and adulthood. Their relatable experiences are rendered in bright poems that shimmer with interwoven Spanish.
A lovely, lilting bildungsroman duet in verse. (author’s note) (Verse fiction. 11-15)Pub Date: June 2, 2026
ISBN: 9781338775679
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: March 23, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2026
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
BOOK TO SCREEN
An intimate novel that beautifully confronts grief and loss.
It’s 1983, and 13-year-old Indian American Reha feels caught between two worlds.
Monday through Friday, she goes to a school where she stands out for not being White but where she has a weekday best friend, Rachel, and does English projects with potential crush Pete. On the weekends, she’s with her other best friend, Sunita (Sunny for short), at gatherings hosted by her Indian community. Reha feels frustrated that her parents refuse to acknowledge her Americanness and insist on raising her with Indian values and habits. Then, on the night of the middle school dance, her mother is admitted to the hospital, and Reha’s world is split in two again: this time, between hospital and home. Suddenly she must learn not just how to be both Indian and American, but also how to live with her mother’s leukemia diagnosis. The sections dealing with Reha’s immigrant identity rely on oft-told themes about the overprotectiveness of immigrant parents and lack the nuance found in later pages. Reha’s story of her evolving relationships with her parents, however, feels layered and real, and the scenes in which Reha must grapple with the possible loss of a parent are beautifully and sensitively rendered. The sophistication of the text makes it a valuable and thought-provoking read even for those older than the protagonist.
An intimate novel that beautifully confronts grief and loss. (Verse novel. 11-15)Pub Date: Feb. 2, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-06-304742-6
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Quill Tree Books/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Nov. 26, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2020
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