The strength of this lengthy, overtly didactic story is that it gives teachers and surviving parents a working vocabulary to...
Emily and Ben, with the help of their father, work through their grief after their mother dies from cancer.
Emily and Ben struggle with all the emotions that follow a devastating loss. Emily shows signs of depression, even snapping at 7-year-old Ben, who is having his own struggles. It’s Emily’s 10th birthday, and she is angry that her mother is not there to celebrate. Emily’s father calmly responds to the mood swings and emotions that his children are experiencing, gently reminding them that the memories they have of their mother will never die. He tries to explain the well-meaning comments of friends and neighbors, responds calmly to his children’s many questions, and tries to help both kids understand the complicated emotions their friends might be feeling. “Some kids might be scared and confused. They might worry that what happened to Mom will happen to someone they love.” Children facing the challenging year following the death of a parent will not feel so alone knowing that Ben, Emily and their father get through it. Occasional full-page portraits show this strong family working together.
The strength of this lengthy, overtly didactic story is that it gives teachers and surviving parents a working vocabulary to use with grieving children and will help when they need to be nudged to talk. (Fiction/bibliotherapy. 9 & up)Pub Date: June 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-160443-036-3
Page Count: 48
Publisher: American Cancer Society
Review Posted Online: April 18, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2012
Korman’s trademark humor makes this an appealing read.
Will a bully always be a bully?
That’s the question eighth-grade football captain Chase Ambrose has to answer for himself after a fall from his roof leaves him with no memory of who and what he was. When he returns to Hiawassee Middle School, everything and everyone is new. The football players can hardly wait for him to come back to lead the team. Two, Bear Bratsky and Aaron Hakimian, seem to be special friends, but he’s not sure what they share. Other classmates seem fearful; he doesn’t know why. Temporarily barred from football because of his concussion, he finds a new home in the video club and, over time, develops a new reputation. He shoots videos with former bullying target Brendan Espinoza and even with Shoshanna Weber, who’d hated him passionately for persecuting her twin brother, Joel. Chase voluntarily continues visiting the nursing home where he’d been ordered to do community service before his fall, making a special friend of a decorated Korean War veteran. As his memories slowly return and he begins to piece together his former life, he’s appalled. His crimes were worse than bullying. Will he become that kind of person again? Set in the present day and told in the alternating voices of Chase and several classmates, this finding-your-middle-school-identity story explores provocative territory. Aside from naming conventions, the book subscribes to the white default.
Korman’s trademark humor makes this an appealing read. (Fiction. 9-14)Pub Date: May 30, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-338-05377-7
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: March 19, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2017
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
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