A seventh grader copes with sexual harassment organized and perpetrated by several boys in her class.
Mila’s conversational first-person narration makes her experiences immediate and her emotions clear. Confused, frustrated, angry, and scared, Mila feels even worse because she can’t count on her usual circle of friends. Zara seems weirdly envious of the boys’ attention. Quiet Omi hates confrontation. And Max is busy with new student (and his new crush) Jared. He’s also disappointed that Mila won’t take his advice to report the harassment. Meanwhile, Mila’s divorced mom just lost her job, and looking after her younger sister takes more time and energy than Mila has sometimes. Adding in band practice, karate classes, and making some new friends creates a story that feels almost as overstuffed as the typical middle schooler’s life. Dee’s smooth writing style and short chapters, however, keep the action moving briskly. The topic—and the boys’ actions—is potentially upsetting but never described in a graphic or gratuitous way. Mila’s reluctance to involve her mother or other adults feels believable, if unfortunate, and her internal dialogues about what is happening and why ring true. The eventual, hard-won resolution does require adult intervention, and it’s satisfying to see the adults own up to their own shortcomings. Mila and Max present white; Omi is Latinx (from the Dominican Republic), and Zara presents black.
This timely exploration of a depressingly common experience should begin some useful conversations. (Fiction. 10-14)Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5344-3237-6
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Aladdin
Review Posted Online: June 25, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2019
Categories: CHILDREN'S SOCIAL THEMES
Did you like this book?
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An engrossing, humorous, and vitally important graphic novel that should be required reading in every middle school in...
11
GET IT
Jordan Banks takes readers down the rabbit hole and into his mostly white prep school in this heartbreakingly accurate middle-grade tale of race, class, microaggressions, and the quest for self-identity.
He may be the new kid, but as an African-American boy from Washington Heights, that stigma entails so much more than getting lost on the way to homeroom. Riverdale Academy Day School, located at the opposite end of Manhattan, is a world away, and Jordan finds himself a stranger in a foreign land, where pink clothing is called salmon, white administrators mistake a veteran African-American teacher for the football coach, and white classmates ape African-American Vernacular English to make themselves sound cool. Jordan’s a gifted artist, and his drawings blend with the narrative to give readers a full sense of his two worlds and his methods of coping with existing in between. Craft skillfully employs the graphic-novel format to its full advantage, giving his readers a delightful and authentic cast of characters who, along with New York itself, pop off the page with vibrancy and nuance. Shrinking Jordan to ant-sized proportions upon his entering the school cafeteria, for instance, transforms the lunchroom into a grotesque Wonderland in which his lack of social standing becomes visually arresting and viscerally uncomfortable.
An engrossing, humorous, and vitally important graphic novel that should be required reading in every middle school in America. (Graphic fiction. 10-14)Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-06-269120-0
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Oct. 15, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2018
Categories: CHILDREN'S SOCIAL THEMES | GENERAL GRAPHIC NOVELS & COMICS
Did you like this book?
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Poignant, respectful, and historically accurate while pulsating with emotional turmoil, adventure, and suspense.
11
GET IT
In the midst of political turmoil, how do you escape the only country that you’ve ever known and navigate a new life? Parallel stories of three different middle school–aged refugees—Josef from Nazi Germany in 1938, Isabel from 1994 Cuba, and Mahmoud from 2015 Aleppo—eventually intertwine for maximum impact.
Three countries, three time periods, three brave protagonists. Yet these three refugee odysseys have so much in common. Each traverses a landscape ruled by a dictator and must balance freedom, family, and responsibility. Each initially leaves by boat, struggles between visibility and invisibility, copes with repeated obstacles and heart-wrenching loss, and gains resilience in the process. Each third-person narrative offers an accessible look at migration under duress, in which the behavior of familiar adults changes unpredictably, strangers exploit the vulnerabilities of transients, and circumstances seem driven by random luck. Mahmoud eventually concludes that visibility is best: “See us….Hear us. Help us.” With this book, Gratz accomplishes a feat that is nothing short of brilliant, offering a skillfully wrought narrative laced with global and intergenerational reverberations that signal hope for the future. Excellent for older middle grade and above in classrooms, book groups, and/or communities looking to increase empathy for new and existing arrivals from afar.
Poignant, respectful, and historically accurate while pulsating with emotional turmoil, adventure, and suspense. (maps, author’s note) (Historical fiction. 10-14)Pub Date: July 25, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-545-88083-1
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: May 10, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2017
Did you like this book?
PROFILES
© Copyright 2021 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
