Entertaining bibliotherapy but also a useful road map to resolution of the age-old problem of severe cattiness.
It’s hard to watch white seventh-grader Lia, rebounding from her mother’s death two years ago, engineer her own slow-motion train wreck.
Like her peers, Lia spends ample time with her friends, but her circle is dominated by Abi, who enjoys humiliating them. Jules is Abi’s personal flunky, never trying to fight back. Athletic Mak has the wherewithal to find other friends but takes the path of least resistance (and as biracial Korean/African-American, she’s the only one identified as a person of color). Marley lives on the edge of the group, glued to them through Lia, who hasn’t thought too hard about her dysfunctional pals. Although all but Marley plan to attend summer camp, at the last moment Lia, embarrassed by her mortifying lack of progress toward puberty, backs out and goes to visit her mother’s oddball sister, Shelby, in Maine. When she returns, the campers have bonded through a demeaning game, “Truth or Dare.” Lia chooses truth, then lies repeatedly about her summer experiences. Plagued by Abi’s bullying, the group begins to splinter apart. Aunt Shelby intervenes, with unexpected results. Although the characters are archetypal, they’re well enough rounded to add excruciating reality and believably illustrate one of the many forms of bullying. Lia’s problems ring fully true, and her eventually learned life lessons are timeless.
Entertaining bibliotherapy but also a useful road map to resolution of the age-old problem of severe cattiness. (Fiction. 10-14)Pub Date: Sept. 20, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4814-5968-6
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Aladdin
Review Posted Online: June 21, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2016
A fantastic, heartbreaking crescendo that echoes beyond the final page.
A young Faeran girl puts everything on the line to save her home and the family she loves.
Emerging from the charred ruins of the Faeran forest lair, 13-year-old green-skinned, brown-haired Willa has formed a new family with humans who care about the Great Smoky Mountain as much as she does. Unfortunately, the Sutton Lumber Company has plans to clear the forest for railroad tracks. Her White adoptive father, Nathaniel, has become a leading voice against the destruction, making him a target. After he is arrested on suspicion of murdering loggers, Willa asks for help from her Faeran clan, but they blame her for the death of their leader and subsequent loss of their old home. Even the forest itself has grown hostile as strange, deathly cold creatures attack. Adelaide, a new blond, blue-eyed friend, and Hialeah, Nathaniel’s White and Cherokee daughter, join Willa in protecting the forest, clearing Nathaniel’s name, saving the Faeran, and unraveling the mystery of the malicious beasts. This duology closer is a captivating, stirring tale of family, friendship, the environment, and our place in the world. At every turn, Willa is faced with higher stakes and decisions that are even harder to make; the consequences of each choice weigh on her heart. The gorgeous prose and imagery of the mountains will inspire in readers a deep admiration for nature and support for Willa’s fight.
A fantastic, heartbreaking crescendo that echoes beyond the final page. (Fantasy. 10-14)Pub Date: May 4, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-368-00760-3
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Disney-Hyperion
Review Posted Online: April 7, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Twelve-year-old Derek—a notoriously reluctant reader of everything but Calvin and Hobbes—would rather set the grass on fire with his sister’s old sunlamp than tackle his summer reading list. More than that, though, he wants to figure out why his mom’s acting so weird about the ten-year-old article he found from a Martha’s Vineyard newspaper entitled “LOCAL GIRL FOUND DEAD ON BEACH.” That mystery threads throughout this engaging middle-grade novel, told in a dryly hilarious first-person voice. Words like “impulse” and “discipline” are illustrated Pictionary-style by the author’s teenage son, mirroring Derek’s vocabulary-building technique: “My parents insist I use this system all the time, so I usually pretend I’m a spy being tortured by Super Evildoers who force me to practice ‘active reading’ or be killed by a foreign assassin.” When he’s not making avocado grenades, the smart-alecky Derek reveals himself as an endearing softy who loves his friends, family and dog and is even capable, in time, of befriending—horrors!—the class goody-goody. A kinder, gentler Wimpy Kid with all the fun and more plot. (Fiction. 10-14)
Pub Date: July 6, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-8050-8903-5
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Christy Ottaviano/Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2010
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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