Realistic and sympathetic, with an appealing protagonist and an interesting hobby for texture.
Middle schooler Ella Cohen navigates life with divorced parents.
Two years ago, Ella’s mother married Krishnan, who lets Ella show his champion dog, Elvis. Ella is close to her stepfather and is happy to share this hobby with him, but she feels pangs of guilt when she thinks of her own father, David, who cannot deign to be in the same room as his ex-wife’s new husband. Ella wishes she could share this hobby—and her debut at the National Dog Show in Philadelphia—with her entire family. Conjecturing that if her father had a partner he would be happy and confident around Krishnan and, therefore, would attend the dog show, Ella and her friends set up a fake online-dating profile for her father, and all sorts of hijinks ensue. By the end of this delightful and satisfying novel, Ella gets her comeuppance—she is caught in a barrage of lies and must apologize to her mother, her father, Krishnan, and Beth (a woman whom her father inadvertently falls for). Ultimately, Ella learns she can’t control all possible outcomes to create the best of all possible worlds. Cherry presents a realistic portrait of a multicultural, blended family—Ella, her mother, and her father are white and Jewish, and Krishnan is South Asian—and doesn’t blunt the challenges of divorce.
Realistic and sympathetic, with an appealing protagonist and an interesting hobby for texture. (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Sept. 25, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5344-1212-5
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Aladdin
Review Posted Online: July 15, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2018
Hugely entertaining, timely, and triumphant.
Robot Roz undertakes an unusual ocean journey to save her adopted island home in this third series entry.
When a poison tide flowing across the ocean threatens their island, Roz works with the resident creatures to ensure that they will have clean water, but the destruction of vegetation and crowding of habitats jeopardize everyone’s survival. Brown’s tale of environmental depredation and turmoil is by turns poignant, graceful, endearing, and inspiring, with his (mostly) gentle robot protagonist at its heart. Though Roz is different from the creatures she lives with or encounters—including her son, Brightbill the goose, and his new mate, Glimmerwing—she makes connections through her versatile communication abilities and her desire to understand and help others. When Roz accidentally discovers that the replacement body given to her by Dr. Molovo is waterproof, she sets out to seek help and discovers the human-engineered source of the toxic tide. Brown’s rich descriptions of undersea landscapes, entertaining conversations between Roz and wild creatures, and concise yet powerful explanations of the effect of the poison tide on the ecology of the island are superb. Simple, spare illustrations offer just enough glimpses of Roz and her surroundings to spark the imagination. The climactic confrontation pits oceangoing mammals, seabirds, fish, and even zooplankton against hardware and technology in a nicely choreographed battle. But it is Roz’s heroism and peacemaking that save the day.
Hugely entertaining, timely, and triumphant. (author’s note) (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Sept. 26, 2023
ISBN: 9780316669412
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 26, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Affecting and hopeful.
A stray dog finds her destiny amid the chaos of a Southern California wildfire.
Wombat is a small dog with stubby legs and “silly ears / that look like furry cookies”—almost impossibly cute in Bricking’s occasional pencil-style vignettes. She’s mastered the art of survival, so when a mysterious internal voice prods her to go toward the fire, she resists. “The wrong way is the right way. / The right way is the wrong way,” the voice insists. When she tells fellow stray Silas about it, he tells Wombat she’s a “destiny dog,” bound to “find their person / before their person / can find them.” Convinced, she decides to follow the mysterious instructions. Meanwhile, Henry, a boy who’s leery of dogs, loves the bats at the wildlife rehabilitation center where Mama Ro, a veterinarian, works; his Mama J is a librarian. Henry and Barnabas, a fruit bat at the center, are both uprooted by the fire, and their paths converge with Wombat’s at an emergency shelter. The third-person perspective shifts from character to character in clusters of free-verse poems that fully immerse readers in each one’s experiences in turn. This extra-concentrated delivery of Applegate’s typically spare writing proves effective, balancing terror and sadness with heart and humor. Henry has light brown skin, Mama Ro has curly black hair and brown skin, and Mama J presents white.
Affecting and hopeful. (Verse fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: May 5, 2026
ISBN: 9780063221178
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Storytide/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 9, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2026
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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