A short, sweet tale of expanding horizons, nurturing friendships, and pursuing passions.
A quiet tween finds her voice during a weeklong magazine internship in Manhattan.
Seventh grader Elena Martinez and her best friend, Summer, love Spread Your Wings magazine. They both apply to be Flyers—the four readers selected annually to spend a summer week contributing to the September back-to-school issue. When only Elena, an aspiring therapist and songwriter, is chosen, she worries the experience will fracture her lifelong friendship with Summer, who has begun spending more time with a cross-country teammate and seems to resent being Elena’s only friend. Considering that socially anxious Elena can barely speak aloud in class, she’s especially intimidated about meeting Cailin Carter, a Flyer who is an elite Texas cheerleader, reality television star, and social media presence. After arriving in New York City, Elena supports fashion-loving Flyer Whitney Richards as she’s having a panic attack at the train station. The final Flyer, Harlow Yoshida, is a budding investigative journalist eager to sink her teeth into a good story. The author captures the awkwardness and excitement of four tween girls getting to know one another, learning about publishing, and having adventures in the city. The story also thoughtfully explores anxiety, self-esteem, and influencer culture. Elena is Puerto Rican, Whitney is cued as Black, Harlow is Japanese American, and Summer and Cailin read as White; race does not play a role in the story.
A short, sweet tale of expanding horizons, nurturing friendships, and pursuing passions. (author's note) (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: June 1, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-5344-7672-1
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: April 13, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2021
Highly amusing.
The incompetent parents from The Willoughbys (2008) find themselves thawed by global warming.
Henry and Frances haven’t aged since the accident that buried them in snow and froze them for 30 years in the Swiss Alps. Their Rip van Winkle–ish return is archly comedic, with the pair, a medical miracle, realizing (at last!) how much they’ve lost and how baffled they are now. Meanwhile, their eldest son, Tim, is grown and in charge of his adoptive father’s candy empire, now threatened with destitution by a congressional ban on candy (opposed by an unnamed Bernie Sanders). He is father to 11-year-old Richie, who employs ad-speak whenever he talks about his newest toys, like a remote-controlled car (“The iconic Lamborghini bull adorns the hubcaps and hood”). But Richie envies Winston Poore, the very poor boy next door, who has a toy car carved for him by his itinerant encyclopedia-salesman father. Winston and his sister, Winifred, plan to earn money for essentials by offering their services as companions to lonely Richie while their mother dabbles, spectacularly unsuccessfully, in running a B&B. Lowry’s exaggerated characters and breezy, unlikely plot are highly entertaining. She offers humorous commentary both via footnotes advising readers of odd facts related to the narrative and via Henry and Frances’ reentry challenges. The threads of the story, with various tales of parents gone missing, fortunes lost or never found, and good luck in the end, are gathered most satisfactorily and warmheartedly.
Highly amusing. (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Sept. 29, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-358-42389-8
Page Count: 176
Publisher: HMH Books
Review Posted Online: June 15, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2020
Elegiac and hopeful.
In the wake of his brother’s death, a black boy struggles with grief and coming out.
When Kingston’s white friend Sandy came out to him a few months ago, Kingston’s older brother, Khalid, told him to stay away from Sandy because King wouldn’t want people to think he was gay too. And then Khalid died. Their mom wants him to see someone, but King refuses because he knows he has nothing to say except that he is sad. Although his dad says boys don’t cry, King can’t stop the tears from coming every time he thinks of Khalid. But King knows that his brother is not really gone: Khalid “shed his skin like a snake” and is now a dragonfly. Complicating King’s grief over the sudden loss of his brother is the fear that Khalid would not still love him if he knew the truth—King is gay. Every day after school King walks to the bayou searching for Khalid, wondering if he can ever share who he is. When Sandy goes missing, King must come to terms with the true cost of shame. The tale is set in Louisiana, and Callender’s vivid descriptions of the rural area King calls home are magical; readers will feel the heat and the sweat, see the trees and the moss. This quiet novel movingly addresses toxic masculinity, homophobia in the black community—especially related to men—fear, and memory.
Elegiac and hopeful. (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Feb. 4, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-338-12933-5
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2019
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