A lovely and intelligent family tale that emphasizes acceptance and care.
A teenager spends an unforgettable season in Minneapolis in this middle-grade sequel.
Thirteen-year-old Jeremiah is looking forward to another summer with his father—though this year will be different in many ways. First, beloved neighbor Mr. Keeler has died, and Jeremiah vows to care for the older man’s garden and make it even better. Second, Jeremiah’s father, who is bisexual, will be marrying his boyfriend, Michael, who is obsessing over Pinterest-esque homemade decorations in “teal and chocolate” (as opposed to green and brown). Finally, and most unexpectedly, the teen’s best friend, Sage—who has queer parents—has seemingly replaced Jeremiah with Asha, the new girl in town. Soon, Jeremiah grows tired of tagging along with the two girls and looks elsewhere for fulfillment: helping his dad and Michael prepare for the wedding, volunteering in English classes for refugees with one of Sage’s moms, and forming a new friendship with Asha’s twin brother, Asad, along with his annual fishing ritual with his father and riding his brand new bicycle. As the summer progresses, Jeremiah finds himself learning new things almost daily—but will his friendship with Sage ever be like it once was? Queer author Klas, who lives in the Twin Cities, deftly highlights the area’s diversity, including its LGBTQ+, Hmong, Somali, and refugee populations, through the eyes of Jeremiah, a thoughtful and open-minded teen. The protagonist enjoys gardening as much as bike riding and wears his ALLY baseball cap at Pride. Jeremiah’s reactions and feelings are realistic for his age—he doesn’t always say or do the right thing—but he is quick to learn and adapt to his surroundings and situations. Bisexuality is still underrepresented in pop culture, and a scene between Jeremiah and his dad addressing this topic is particularly poignant. In many ways, this tale, with distinct black-and-white illustrations by Arroyo, is a typical coming-of-age story. Yet readers will find themselves learning alongside Jeremiah, who tries spiced lamb at a food market and dissects the White savior complex in a kid-friendly way.
A lovely and intelligent family tale that emphasizes acceptance and care.Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-947159-65-5
Page Count: 282
Publisher: One Elm Books
Review Posted Online: March 23, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Readers can still rely on this series to bring laughs.
The Heffley family’s house undergoes a disastrous attempt at home improvement.
When Great Aunt Reba dies, she leaves some money to the family. Greg’s mom calls a family meeting to determine what to do with their share, proposing home improvements and then overruling the family’s cartoonish wish lists and instead pushing for an addition to the kitchen. Before bringing in the construction crew, the Heffleys attempt to do minor maintenance and repairs themselves—during which Greg fails at the work in various slapstick scenes. Once the professionals are brought in, the problems keep getting worse: angry neighbors, terrifying problems in walls, and—most serious—civil permitting issues that put the kibosh on what work’s been done. Left with only enough inheritance to patch and repair the exterior of the house—and with the school’s dismal standardized test scores as a final straw—Greg’s mom steers the family toward moving, opening up house-hunting and house-selling storylines (and devastating loyal Rowley, who doesn’t want to lose his best friend). While Greg’s positive about the move, he’s not completely uncaring about Rowley’s action. (And of course, Greg himself is not as unaffected as he wishes.) The gags include effectively placed callbacks to seemingly incidental events (the “stress lizard” brought in on testing day is particularly funny) and a lampoon of after-school-special–style problem books. Just when it seems that the Heffleys really will move, a new sequence of chaotic trouble and property destruction heralds a return to the status quo. Whew.
Readers can still rely on this series to bring laughs. (Graphic/fiction hybrid. 8-12)Pub Date: Nov. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4197-3903-3
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Amulet/Abrams
Review Posted Online: Nov. 18, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
An entertaining take on family values, Wimpy Kid style.
A summer vacation turns out to be anything but relaxing for Greg and a teeming horde of Heffleys.
Gramma declines the offer of a grand birthday celebration, saying that “what would make her REALLY happy is if everyone else went to Ruttyneck Island”—though she prepares individual packs of her legendary meatballs. (“You knew exactly how much Gramma likes you by how many meatballs you got.”) A gaggle of Heffley relatives and a dog stuff themselves into a small beach house, where overcrowding, personality conflicts, and simmering resentments become just some of the ingredients in a rolling boil of sitcom-style catastrophes, not to mention questionable decisions ranging from leaving the kids to make dinner unsupervised to labeling a cooler “HUMAN ORGANS” to keep random passersby from helping themselves. As usual, Greg supplies the setups in poker-faced journal entries interspersed with black-and-white drawings of slouched figures bearing frowny expressions of dismay or annoyance to cue the laffs. Gramma, it eventually turns out, not only (unsurprisingly) has plans of her own, but is also keeping a shocking secret about those meatballs. To go with the knee-slapping set pieces, Kinney slips in a tasty bit of family lore about how Greg’s parents met, plus droll takes on such low-hanging comedy fruit as restaurant manners, viciously competitive board games, and social media influencers (Greg being one, albeit with zero followers, and his Aunt Veronica’s little dog being another, with 3.8 million).
An entertaining take on family values, Wimpy Kid style. (Graphic/fiction hybrid. 8-12)Pub Date: Oct. 22, 2024
ISBN: 9781419766954
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Amulet/Abrams
Review Posted Online: Oct. 22, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2024
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