Marigold’s mother, Becca, is a performance artist—the kind of artist who, when performing for her daughter’s second-grade classmates, pours oil on herself to represent the United States, because it is guzzling oil and making a mess. Unfortunately, as Becca pursues her art, daughter Marigold gets hurt in the process. Speaking in an uneven, fragment-laden, first-person voice, Marigold tries to understand her mother’s work and art, but she is unhinged when Becca uses the stage to get back at her best friend Emma’s uptight mother. The two mothers could not be more different, and their soured relationship is the reason Marigold and her family has had to move in the middle of her seventh-grade year. Because Becca wants to fit in better with the mothers in this new school, she offers an improvisational acting class at Marigold’s school. Becca’s popular class is the catalyst for bringing warring social groups together. Peripheral characters, especially prairie-talking sister Kennedy and wise, calm Gram, help keep Marigold optimistic, even while she worries about her unpredictable mother and the damaged relationship with Emma. A downright confusing cover and an extraordinarily speedy peacemaking at the conclusion make this one a hard sell to its real audience—quirky middle-schoolers who are happy with their nonconformist status. Mother-daughter book clubs will have a lot to talk about, though. (Fiction. 10-14)
Pub Date: April 19, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-4424-0923-1
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Aladdin
Review Posted Online: April 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2011
An endearing protagonist runs the first, fast leg of Reynolds' promising relay.
Castle “Ghost” Cranshaw feels like he’s been running ever since his dad pulled that gun on him and his mom—and used it.
His dad’s been in jail three years now, but Ghost still feels the trauma, which is probably at the root of the many “altercations” he gets into at middle school. When he inserts himself into a practice for a local elite track team, the Defenders, he’s fast enough that the hard-as-nails coach decides to put him on the team. Ghost is surprised to find himself caring enough about being on the team that he curbs his behavior to avoid “altercations.” But Ma doesn’t have money to spare on things like fancy running shoes, so Ghost shoplifts a pair that make his feet feel impossibly light—and his conscience correspondingly heavy. Ghost’s narration is candid and colloquial, reminiscent of such original voices as Bud Caldwell and Joey Pigza; his level of self-understanding is both believably childlike and disarming in its perception. He is self-focused enough that secondary characters initially feel one-dimensional, Coach in particular, but as he gets to know them better, so do readers, in a way that unfolds naturally and pleasingly. His three fellow “newbies” on the Defenders await their turns to star in subsequent series outings. Characters are black by default; those few white people in Ghost’s world are described as such.
An endearing protagonist runs the first, fast leg of Reynolds' promising relay. (Fiction. 10-14)Pub Date: Aug. 30, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4814-5015-7
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Caitlyn Dlouhy/Atheneum
Review Posted Online: July 19, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
SEEN & HEARD
Riveting, inspiring, and sometimes hilarious.
If you made a recording to be heard by the aliens who found the iPod, what would you record?
For 11-year-old Alex Petroski, it's easy. He records everything. He records the story of how he travels to New Mexico to a rocket festival with his dog, Carl Sagan, and his rocket. He records finding out that a man with the same name and birthday as his dead father has an address in Las Vegas. He records eating at Johnny Rockets for the first time with his new friends, who are giving him a ride to find his dead father (who might not be dead!), and losing Carl Sagan in the wilds of Las Vegas, and discovering he has a half sister. He even records his own awful accident. Cheng delivers a sweet, soulful debut novel with a brilliant, refreshing structure. His characters manage to come alive through the “transcript” of Alex’s iPod recording, an odd medium that sounds like it would be confusing but really works. Taking inspiration from the Voyager Golden Record released to space in 1977, Alex, who explains he has “light brown skin,” records all the important moments of a journey that takes him from a family of two to a family of plenty.
Riveting, inspiring, and sometimes hilarious. (Fiction. 10-14)Pub Date: Feb. 28, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-399-18637-0
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: Oct. 18, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
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