Comparisons to Judy Blume's Deenie (1973) might be inevitable, but Rachel stands admirably on her own.
Both the literal and figurative senses of the word "spine" form the backbone of Gerber's debut.
The same day white seventh-grader Rachel Brooks starts in an important soccer game, she learns that her scoliosis has worsened, and she now needs to wear a brace for 23 hours a day. The author, who wore a brace herself, vividly conveys its constricting bulk. But her spine isn't the only curve Rachel has to brace herself for. Her mother, whose own scoliosis required a spinal fusion, is rigid and unsympathetic as the brace affects Rachel's soccer technique and jeopardizes her place on the team. Her classmates gossip, and though her friends and crush are generally supportive, the author nails their realistic discomfort at being bullied by association. Ultimately, her friends help her to adjust, and Rachel learns to assert herself. As Rachel grows a spine, her mother learns to bend, sympathetically revealing the fears she never addressed during her own treatment. Their disparate experiences give scoliosis—and their relationship—nuance as well as tension. The author doesn't diminish Rachel's difficulties, but at heart her story is uplifting; a brace can be a "built-in drum" to dance to. An author's note provides a short list of scoliosis resources.
Comparisons to Judy Blume's Deenie (1973) might be inevitable, but Rachel stands admirably on her own. (Fiction. 11-14)Pub Date: March 28, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-545-90214-4
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Levine/Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Dec. 5, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2016
Not for the faint of heart or stomach (or maybe of any parts) but sure to be appreciated by middle school zombie cognoscenti.
Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle meets Left for Dead/The Walking Dead/Shaun of the Dead in a high-energy, high-humor look at the zombie apocalypse, complete with baseball (rather than cricket) bats.
The wholesome-seeming Iowa cornfields are a perfect setting for the emergence of ghastly anomalies: flesh-eating cows and baseball-coach zombies. The narrator hero, Rabi (for Rabindranath), and his youth baseball teammates and friends, Miguel and Joe, discover by chance that all is not well with their small town’s principal industry: the Milrow corporation’s giant feedlot and meat-production and -packing facility. The ponds of cow poo and crammed quarters for the animals are described in gaggingly smelly detail, and the bone-breaking, bloody, flesh-smashing encounters with the zombies have a high gross-out factor. The zombie cows and zombie humans who emerge from the muck are apparently a product of the food supply gone cuckoo in service of big-money profits with little concern for the end result. It’s up to Rabi and his pals to try to prove what’s going on—and to survive the corporation’s efforts to silence them. Much as Bacigalupi’s Ship Breaker (2010) was a clarion call to action against climate change, here’s a signal alert to young teens to think about what they eat, while the considerable appeal of the characters and plot defies any preachiness.
Not for the faint of heart or stomach (or maybe of any parts) but sure to be appreciated by middle school zombie cognoscenti. (Fiction. 11-14)Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-316-22078-1
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: June 25, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2013
An outstanding addition to the inadequate-parent genre.
For 12-year-old, “fifty percent Swedish, twenty-five percent Haitian, twenty-five percent French” Felix, all of his scary stories are about the Ministry of Children and Family Development—the Canadian agency that has the power to take him from his mom and place him in foster care.
His flighty mother, Astrid (she’s the Swedish part), is both depressed and chronically under- or often unemployed. His father is mostly out of the picture. Astrid will do what she needs to, including artfully lying and stealing, to keep their heads—barely—above water as they descend into homelessness. As depicted with gritty realism, the pair has been living in a van for months, using public restrooms, and rarely having enough to eat. But Felix has two great friends, Winnie, who is Asian, and Dylan, who is white; they will watch his back whatever comes. Sadly, they have little idea of his truly dire situation since he’s so resourceful at hiding his problems in order to stave off the MCFD. When Felix is selected to appear on a quiz show, it seems as if it could offer a resolution for their troubles: Winning would earn him a $25,000 prize. Felix’s deeply engrossing and fully immersive first-person narrative of homelessness is both illuminating and heartbreaking. Although the story ends with hope for the future, it’s his winsome and affecting determination that will win readers over.
An outstanding addition to the inadequate-parent genre. (Fiction. 11-14)Pub Date: Sept. 11, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5247-6834-8
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Wendy Lamb/Random
Review Posted Online: June 10, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2018
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