A sweet middle school episode that celebrates the friendship gained from working together.
At the crossroads of preteen and teen, Wylie faces the strain of growing up.
Wylie and her longtime best friend, Jada, have loved boy-band heartthrob Colby Cash for years. Now that Colby Cash is hosting the television vocal competition show Non-Instrumental, Wylie can hardly wait for the new season to begin. Jada, however, is less enthusiastic, the first sign, as they begin seventh grade, that there are some growing pains ahead. Jada, prone to melodrama, spreads her wings and gets a part in the school musical. Feeling abandoned, Wylie creates a bond with a new friend, Libby, who encourages her to get over her stage fright and join her in starting an a cappella group in order to win a video call with Cash. Busy nursing her feelings of estrangement, narrator Wylie also bemoans having to spend weekends with her father and his new family. Tensions flair when jealousy compels Jada to create a competing singing group, thus incentivizing the flow of creative juices. With the help of a mentoring teacher, the young teens raise their voices and learn to harmonize, traversing the tricky landscape of hurt feelings and maturation. Although she shares her name with a black actress and has long, black hair and dark eyes, Jada’s identity is unexplored, while Wylie and Libby are white; the cast seems solidly middle-class in this kind, mild-mannered drama.
A sweet middle school episode that celebrates the friendship gained from working together. (Fiction. 9-14)Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-4814-7157-2
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Aladdin
Review Posted Online: Oct. 15, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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 REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
A beautiful, moving mythological adventure.
In a world based on Greek mythology, a 12-year-old aspires to be a Ferryer of the dead but gets off track when she meets a Living girl who’s found her way into the Underworld.
All Senka knows is her existence on an island in the middle of the Acheron River, “smack between the realm of the Living and the realm of the Dead,” where she’s the ward of Charon, the Ferryer of souls. Her teacher is an enormous raven named Mortimer. After Senka, who presents white, learns the Rules for Ferryers, Charon agrees to her repeated requests and starts training her to become a Ferryer. But when an emergency leads to Senka’s being left alone, she disobeys Charon’s explicit orders, takes the boat out on her own—and quickly learns that ferrying souls is far more complicated than she realized. She encounters dark-haired, brown-skinned Poppy, whose “edges are crisp”—she’s a Living girl who will sacrifice anything to find Joey, her younger brother who died. As Senka tries to convince Poppy to return to the Shore of the Living, the two get stuck in the Underwild, a “lawless place where chaos reigns” that’s filled with innumerable dangers and shrouded in secrets. Senka’s lively first-person narration relates the unexpected friendship that forms through her shared adventures with Poppy as they face mortality and the unknown. Debut author Targosz offers readers a meaningful exploration of grief and its impact on those left behind.
A beautiful, moving mythological adventure. (Fantasy. 9-13)Pub Date: March 25, 2025
ISBN: 9781665957632
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Aladdin
Review Posted Online: Dec. 14, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
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