This touching tale about finding strength in uniqueness is a well-crafted read from start to finish.
Zoe G. Reindeer hates her last name and her big feet and anything else that makes her "just Zoe."
The 11-year-old black girl enjoys living next to her father's Pasadena nursery, Doc Reindeer's Exotic Plant Wonderland. Among the plants she can be safe from her queen-bee older sister, Jade, and annoying genius younger brother, Harper. Inside the Wonderland, Zoe feels at peace. Outside the Wonderland, she is “just Zoe.” Although she loves hanging out with her best friend, budding filmmaker Quincy Hill, Zoe struggles to connect with others. No one seems to appreciate her for who she is. Even her next-door neighbor Mrs. Warner calls her “little Miss Jade.” All day long she daydreams of Imaginary Zoe, the cool teenage Zoe with a perfect life and overflowing confidence. When a kind visitor stops by the Wonderland, Zoe begins to see that there's more to her than "just Zoe." Woods develops a realistic adolescent struggle with self-acceptance. One betrayal, one relentlessly mean older sister, one moment of rejection weigh heavily on Zoe. Conversely, one kind word, a few minutes of undivided attention, helps disrupt her negative self-image. Young readers will easily identify with Zoe's unbridled curiosity and wishes for the future, and the ending satisfies and avoids being hokey or heavy-handed.
This touching tale about finding strength in uniqueness is a well-crafted read from start to finish. (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Aug. 16, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-399-17097-3
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Nancy Paulsen Books
Review Posted Online: May 17, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
It’s great to see these kids “so enthusiastic about committing high treason.” (historical note) (Historical fiction. 10-12)
Near the end of World War II, two kids join their parents in a plot to kill Adolf Hitler.
Max, 12, lives with his parents and his older sister in a Berlin that’s under constant air bombardment. During one such raid, a mortally wounded man stumbles into the white German family’s home and gasps out his last wish: “The Führer must die.” With this nighttime visitation, Max and Gerta discover their parents have been part of a resistance cell, and the siblings want in. They meet a colorful band of upper-class types who seem almost too whimsical to be serious. Despite her charming levity, Prussian aristocrat and cell leader Frau Becker is grimly aware of the stakes. She enlists Max and Gerta as couriers who sneak forged identification papers to Jews in hiding. Max and Gerta are merely (and realistically) cogs in the adults’ plans, but there’s plenty of room for their own heroism. They escape capture, rescue each other when they’re caught out during an air raid, and willingly put themselves repeatedly at risk to catch a spy. The fictional plotters—based on a mix of several real anti-Hitler resistance cells—are portrayed with a genuine humor, giving them the space to feel alive even in such a slim volume.
It’s great to see these kids “so enthusiastic about committing high treason.” (historical note) (Historical fiction. 10-12)Pub Date: April 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-338-35902-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Jan. 20, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2020
Another epic outing in a graphic hybrid series that continues not just to push the envelope, but tear it to shreds.
Pranksters George and Harold face the deadliest challenge of their checkered careers: a supersmart, superstrong gym teacher.
With the avowed aim of enticing an audience of “grouchy old people” to the Waistband Warrior’s latest exploit, Pilkey promises “references to health care, gardening, Bob Evans restaurants, hard candies, FOX News, and gentle-yet-effective laxatives.” He delivers, too. But lest fans of the Hanes-clad hero fret, he also stirs in plenty of fart jokes, brain-melting puns, and Flip-O-Rama throwdowns. After a meteorite transforms Mr. Meaner into a mad genius (evil, of course, because “as everyone knows, most gym teachers are inherently evil”) and he concocts a brown gas that turns children into blindly obedient homework machines, George and Harold travel into the future to enlist aid from their presumably immune adult selves. Temporarily leaving mates and children (of diverse sexes, both) behind, Old George and Old Harold come to the rescue. But Meaner has a robot suit (of course he has a robot suit), and he not only beats down the oldsters, but is only fazed for a moment when Capt. Underpants himself comes to deliver a kick to the crotch. Fortunately, gym teachers, “like toddlers,” will put anything in their mouths—so an ingestion of soda pop and Mentos at last spells doom, or more accurately: “CHeffGoal-D’BLOOOM!”
Another epic outing in a graphic hybrid series that continues not just to push the envelope, but tear it to shreds. (Graphic/fiction hybrid. 8-10)Pub Date: Aug. 25, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-545-50492-8
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: May 17, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2015
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