by Arthur Salm ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 1, 2012
Preteen boys might initially identify with Max’s love of baseball and his nervousness around girls, but they will be too...
Can 12-year-old Max become someone totally new at family summer camp?
When his parents announce the three of them are going to camp together for a week, Max initially wishes he could stay home, like his college-age brother, Ben. Not that Max would want to actually stay with Ben, who has the temperament of a grizzly bear. However, on the way to camp, Max realizes he will be able to be anyone, to act any way, to say anything about himself that he wants to in a camp full of strangers. Thus Mad Max is born. After a couple of (tame) adventures with the wilder kids at camp while his parents are otherwise occupied, Max begins to rethink his new persona. Still, there were aspects of Mad Max that he liked. Can he import those traits into his home life, find out why bully Wiley McNaught hates him and maybe kiss a girl? Salm’s debut is a meandering tale with a narrator who leaves no aside unexplored… even within other asides. The hand-lettered footnotes wear thin early on, especially those that explain why Max’s witticisms are so funny. The characters are realistic enough, but the scattershot plot and abrupt end leave much to be desired. Scattered doodles add visual interest but seem largely unrelated to the text.
Preteen boys might initially identify with Max’s love of baseball and his nervousness around girls, but they will be too bored to finish his “adventure.” (Fiction. 9-12)Pub Date: May 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-4424-2930-7
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Feb. 14, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2012
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by Christina Li ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 12, 2021
Charming, poignant, and thoughtfully woven.
An aspiring scientist and a budding artist become friends and help each other with dream projects.
Unfolding in mid-1980s Sacramento, California, this story stars 12-year-olds Rosalind and Benjamin as first-person narrators in alternating chapters. Ro’s father, a fellow space buff, was killed by a drunk driver; the rocket they were working on together lies unfinished in her closet. As for Benji, not only has his best friend, Amir, moved away, but the comic book holding the clue for locating his dad is also missing. Along with their profound personal losses, the protagonists share a fixation with the universe’s intriguing potential: Ro decides to complete the rocket and hopes to launch mementos of her father into outer space while Benji’s conviction that aliens and UFOs are real compels his imagination and creativity as an artist. An accident in science class triggers a chain of events forcing Benji and Ro, who is new to the school, to interact and unintentionally learn each other’s secrets. They resolve to find Benji’s dad—a famous comic-book artist—and partner to finish Ro’s rocket for the science fair. Together, they overcome technical, scheduling, and geographical challenges. Readers will be drawn in by amusing and fantastical elements in the comic book theme, high emotional stakes that arouse sympathy, and well-drawn character development as the protagonists navigate life lessons around grief, patience, self-advocacy, and standing up for others. Ro is biracial (Chinese/White); Benji is White.
Charming, poignant, and thoughtfully woven. (Fiction. 9-12)Pub Date: Jan. 12, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-06-300888-5
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Quill Tree Books/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Oct. 26, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2020
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by Christina Li
by Lois Lowry ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 1, 1989
A deftly told story that dramatizes how Danes appointed themselves bodyguards—not only for their king, who was in the habit...
The author of the Anastasia books as well as more serious fiction (Rabble Starkey, 1987) offers her first historical fiction—a story about the escape of the Jews from Denmark in 1943.
Five years younger than Lisa in Carol Matas' Lisa's War (1989), Annemarie Johansen has, at 10, known three years of Nazi occupation. Though ever cautious and fearful of the ubiquitous soldiers, she is largely unaware of the extent of the danger around her; the Resistance kept even its participants safer by telling them as little as possible, and Annemarie has never been told that her older sister Lise died in its service. When the Germans plan to round up the Jews, the Johansens take in Annemarie's friend, Ellen Rosen, and pretend she is their daughter; later, they travel to Uncle Hendrik's house on the coast, where the Rosens and other Jews are transported by fishing boat to Sweden. Apart from Lise's offstage death, there is little violence here; like Annemarie, the reader is protected from the full implications of events—but will be caught up in the suspense and menace of several encounters with soldiers and in Annemarie's courageous run as courier on the night of the escape. The book concludes with the Jews' return, after the war, to homes well kept for them by their neighbors.
A deftly told story that dramatizes how Danes appointed themselves bodyguards—not only for their king, who was in the habit of riding alone in Copenhagen, but for their Jews. (Historical fiction. 9-12)Pub Date: April 1, 1989
ISBN: 0547577095
Page Count: 156
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: Oct. 17, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1989
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by Lois Lowry ; illustrated by Jonathan Stroh
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by Lois Lowry
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by Lois Lowry ; illustrated by Kenard Pak
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