Margot’s cautionary tale offers an insightful look at a young girl’s journey of self-discovery and acceptance.
With a mother who reads tarot cards, 2-year-old triplet half sisters and an embarrassing stepfather, Margot longs for a more mundane life.
On the eve of seventh grade, Margot has a lot to contend with, including a humiliating new nickname following a disastrous attempt to impress the popular crowd. Now that her BFF Erika is attending private school, Margot agonizes over how to capture the attention of her crush, Gorgeous George, while avoiding her arch nemesis, Sarah. In her haste to reinvent herself, Margot befriends edgy, cool new girl Em, entranced by Em’s defiant attitude toward Sarah. The constant barrage of Sarah’s subtle cruelty takes a toll on Margot, pushing her toward increasingly reckless behavior. Spurred on by Em, the situation between Margot and Sarah escalates and the stakes become dangerous as events spiral out of control. Ultimately, Margot must decide if being popular is worth sacrificing everything she knows to be right. Through Margot’s transformation from quiet girl to troublemaker, Humphrey thoughtfully explores the repercussions of bullying. Preteen readers will relate to Margot’s insecurities about her looks and her longing to fit in.
Margot’s cautionary tale offers an insightful look at a young girl’s journey of self-discovery and acceptance. (Fiction. 11-14)Pub Date: June 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-4231-2301-9
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Disney Press
Review Posted Online: April 18, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Promising elements aplenty, but they never fully mesh or deliver more than a passing chill.
Cryptic clues in a Web comic put a Seattle teenager onto the trail of a deranged kidnapper and his victim.
Three years after the (supposed) drowning of bosom friend Libby, 16-year-old May is shocked to see new stickers and other merch for “Princess X,” an intrepid swordswoman in a puff-sleeved dress and sneakers that she and Libby had privately invented in fifth grade. The princess’s recently posted online adventures tell a scary tale about escaping from a “Needle Man” years after being stolen as a replacement for his own dead daughter. They leave May convinced that Libby is still alive—hiding out from her clever, relentless captor and imbedding veiled messages in the comic that only May would catch. Said hints lead May and Trick, a hacker dude she goes to for help, on a quest through the city’s seedier and underground quarters to encounters with Jackdaw (a gay, goth Robin Hood) and a desperate scheme to steal proof of the Needle Man’s perfidy. Priest cranks the suspense somewhat by casting the kidnapper as both an IT expert and a killer, but because he mostly appears only in the emotionally charged, sparely drawn purple-and-black comics pages that Ciesemier scatters through the tale’s first two-thirds, he remains, at best, a shadowy bogeyman.
Promising elements aplenty, but they never fully mesh or deliver more than a passing chill. (Thriller. 11-14)Pub Date: May 26, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-545-62085-7
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Levine/Scholastic
Review Posted Online: March 2, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2015
Nineteenth-century servant girl Bet follows the classic cross-dressing adventure, disguising herself as a boy so she can attend school in a tale more Yentl than Mulan. Will is a 16-year-old upper-crust rapscallion, and Bet is the servant and companion who’s been raised side-by-side with him all her life. Will has been expelled from yet one more school when Bet proposes her cunning plan: Bet will take Will’s place, and Will can enter the military as he’s always dreamed. The plan goes off without a hitch. It’s too bad that Will’s current school, the Betterman Academy, is a dreadful place reserved for unredeemable boys. Luckily for Bet, her roommate, James, is a darling. This slim volume steps through all the required moments in the girl-disguised-as-a-boy genre, though one hopes the predictable moments of gay panic and safely heterosexual resolution will ring false to modern readers. This brief historical, solidly 20th century in feel, offers a perfectly pleasant romantic interlude for readers looking for bookish but light fare. (Historical fiction. 11-13)
Pub Date: July 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-547-22308-7
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: June 2, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2010
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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