A 12-year-old whose dreams of musicianship are shattered discovers a passion for code.
Emmy’s lonely at her new San Francisco school. When her pianist dad got a dream job at the symphony, the family moved from Wisconsin—her mom’s opera career is portable—but Emmy’s miserable. Devastated she doesn’t have the talent to follow in her parents’ footsteps, she ends up in computer club instead of choir. And it’s there, learning Java, that Emmy makes friends with Abigail—and discovers that coding gives her a joy she’d believed came only from music. Free-verse chapters are conventional at first, drawing poetic structures from musical metaphors. But as Emmy learns Java, the language and structure of programming seep into her poems. Music and code interweave (one poem presents Emmy and Abigail’s pair-programming as a musical duet). Typeface changes have myriad effects: showcasing software and musical terms, mirroring the way formatting helps programmers understand software, and reflecting Emmy’s emotional state. As she becomes more comfortable in her own skin, she grows aware of the many traumas that affect her family, classmates, and teachers, and readers will cheer to see them work collectively—like an orchestra or like software developers—to create something beautiful. Characters’ races are unspecified, but on the cover Emmy presents white and Abigail (whose braids are referred to repeatedly) as black.
Never didactic, these poems interweave music, programming, family drama, and middle school as interconnected parts of Emmy’s life. (glossary) (Verse fiction. 9-13)Pub Date: Sept. 24, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-358-04082-8
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Versify/HMH
Review Posted Online: May 8, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2019
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BOOK REVIEW
Moving and poetic.
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A motherless boy is forced to abandon his domesticated fox when his father decides to join soldiers in an approaching war.
Twelve-year-old Peter found his loyal companion, Pax, as an orphaned kit while still grieving his own mother’s death. Peter’s difficult and often harsh father said he could keep the fox “for now” but five years later insists the boy leave Pax by the road when he takes Peter to his grandfather’s house, hundreds of miles away. Peter’s journey back to Pax and Pax’s steadfastness in waiting for Peter’s return result in a tale of survival, intrinsic connection, and redemption. The battles between warring humans in the unnamed conflict remain remote, but the oncoming wave of deaths is seen through Pax’s eyes as woodland creatures are blown up by mines. While Pax learns to negotiate the complications of surviving in the wild and relating to other foxes, Peter breaks his foot and must learn to trust a seemingly eccentric woman named Vola who battles her own ghosts of war. Alternating chapters from the perspectives of boy and fox are perfectly paced and complementary. Only Peter, Pax, Vola, and three of Pax’s fox companions are named, conferring a spare, fablelike quality. Every moment in the graceful, fluid narrative is believable. Klassen’s cover art has a sense of contained, powerful stillness. (Interior illustrations not seen.)
Moving and poetic. (Animal fantasy. 9-13)Pub Date: Feb. 2, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-06-237701-2
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Balzer + Bray/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Oct. 19, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2015
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In parallel narratives, four young people simultaneously experience the harrowing effects of climate change.
If terrifying readers is an effective way to spur them to take the climate crisis seriously, Gratz does an admirable job, as he plunges his middle schoolers into desperate, life-threatening straits in three wildly dangerous scenarios. For Akira Kristiansen, a peaceful visit to a treasured grove of Sierra Nevada giant sequoias turns into a frantic scramble to outrace a roaring megafire. In Churchill, Manitoba, eighth grade dudes Owen Mackenzie, a White boy, and George Gruyère (Mushkegowuk) are viciously mauled and then stalked by polar bears. At the same time, Puerto Rican Florida resident Natalie Torres is whirled off in the storm surge when a Category 5 hurricane hits Miami. Along with acknowledging in his afterword that the specific incidents portrayed are fictional but are inspired by actual events happening around the world, not just in North America, the author pulls his characters—dedicated climate activists all in the wake of their narrow escapes from death—together to deliver speeches at an international climate rally at the end. “It’s your world,” Gratz finishes in his author’s note, “your future. It’s up to you to decide what you want that future world to look like, and what you can do to make it happen.”
Lecture-y toward the end, but the scary message is delivered with wrenching, dramatic urgency. (Fiction. 9-13)Pub Date: Oct. 4, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-338-73567-3
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2022
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