A sensitive portrayal of art and roots pulled under by a narrow cultural perspective.
A girl in a U.S. military family navigates the days and months following Sept. 11, 2001.
Tennessee is only the most recent place that seventh grader Abbey has lived: Her dad’s an Army sergeant, and his career means the family has moved frequently. DuBois uses free verse for Abbey’s first-person narration, skillfully conveying her protagonist’s pained and halting thoughts, occasionally integrating a lone, subtly meaningful rhyme. Themes weave loosely: Abbey’s first period (arriving “like a punch to the gut / like a shove in the girls’ room”); the terrorist attacks; grieving a beloved aunt, lost on the 86th floor of a New York tower, the entire building “also missing”; sublime peer friendship and run-of-the-mill peer bullying; Abbey’s artwork; longing for roots. As Dad deploys to Afghanistan, the stress and suffering of military families are written with breadth and warmth. Potential suffering of humans on the other side of that war receives only one dubious and dismissive mention, however. Abbey’s Muslim, Kurdish American classmate, Jiman, is kind and artistic, and Abbey eventually befriends her. However, Jiman and her family might be the only characters of color in this small Tennessee town, and Jiman is portrayed as so confident, dignified, invulnerable, and inscrutable—rarely reacting even when facing racism and Islamophobia—that she exists mostly for Abbey’s (and readers’) edification.
A sensitive portrayal of art and roots pulled under by a narrow cultural perspective. (author's note) (Verse fiction. 10-13)Pub Date: Aug. 18, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-8234-4421-2
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Holiday House
Review Posted Online: May 2, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
Rich and strange (and kitted out with an eye-catching cover), but stronger in the set pieces than the internal logic.
Chainani works an elaborate sea change akin to Gregory Maguire’s Wicked (1995), though he leaves the waters muddied.
Every four years, two children, one regarded as particularly nice and the other particularly nasty, are snatched from the village of Gavaldon by the shadowy School Master to attend the divided titular school. Those who survive to graduate become major or minor characters in fairy tales. When it happens to sweet, Disney princess–like Sophie and her friend Agatha, plain of features, sour of disposition and low of self-esteem, they are both horrified to discover that they’ve been dropped not where they expect but at Evil and at Good respectively. Gradually—too gradually, as the author strings out hundreds of pages of Hogwarts-style pranks, classroom mishaps and competitions both academic and romantic—it becomes clear that the placement wasn’t a mistake at all. Growing into their true natures amid revelations and marked physical changes, the two spark escalating rivalry between the wings of the school. This leads up to a vicious climactic fight that sees Good and Evil repeatedly switching sides. At this point, readers are likely to feel suddenly left behind, as, thanks to summary deus ex machina resolutions, everything turns out swell(ish).
Rich and strange (and kitted out with an eye-catching cover), but stronger in the set pieces than the internal logic. (Fantasy. 11-13)Pub Date: May 14, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-06-210489-2
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Feb. 12, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
Cinematic, over-the-top decadence, a tense race against time, and lessons on what’s truly valuable.
A reward of $5,000,000 almost ruins everything for two seventh graders.
On a class trip to New York City, Felix and Benji find a wallet belonging to social media billionaire Laura Friendly. Benji, a well-off, chaotic kid with learning disabilities, swipes $20 from the wallet before they send it back to its owner. Felix, a poor, shy, rule-follower, reluctantly consents. So when Laura Friendly herself arrives to give them a reward for the returned wallet, she’s annoyed. To teach her larcenous helpers a lesson, Laura offers them a deal: a $20,000 college scholarship or slightly over $5 million cash—but with strings attached. The boys must spend all the money in 30 days, with legal stipulations preventing them from giving anything away, investing, or telling anyone about it. The glorious windfall quickly grows to become a chore and then a torment as the boys appear increasingly selfish and irresponsible to the adults in their lives. They rent luxury cars, hire a (wonderful) philosophy undergrad as a chauffeur, take their families to Disney World, and spend thousands on in-app game purchases. Yet, surrounded by hedonistically described piles of loot and filthy lucre, the boys long for simpler fundamentals. The absorbing spending spree reads like a fun family film, gleefully stuffed with the very opulence it warns against. Major characters are White.
Cinematic, over-the-top decadence, a tense race against time, and lessons on what’s truly valuable. (mathematical explanations) (Fiction. 10-12)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-17525-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: June 29, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2020
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