Without sugarcoating crises, tenderly underscores how love and trust can shepherd lost kids toward hopeful futures.
A boy launches a lucrative business walking his neighbors’ dogs in order to help his family financially and to cope with big changes in his life.
After reluctantly looking after Amos, his family friend’s dog, 13-year-old Louis realizes he can turn a profit through dog care. He’s anxious about starting high school in the fall after years of home schooling and isolation from kids his own age. His dread is compounded by his family’s economic struggles in the wake of his mother’s being injured at work, losing her job, and going to an inpatient program for painkiller addiction. The stress of this separation also strains Louis’ relationship with Ike, his older brother, and Louis uses sarcasm and silence to avoid talking about family issues with his stoic fisherman dad and 11-months-younger sister, Faye. His dog-walking business, however, unexpectedly helps him make new friends among the neighborhood kids, and Louis begins to grow as a person and nurture new relationships, including a first love. Louis, who reads white, overcomes his hopelessness, and the novel explores how children experiencing stressful home lives often hide their problems and struggle alone. The story illustrates the central importance of building community and friendships as a key to surviving and overcoming difficult times. There’s also plenty of engaging canine content that will appeal to animal lovers.
Without sugarcoating crises, tenderly underscores how love and trust can shepherd lost kids toward hopeful futures. (Fiction. 10-13)Pub Date: March 12, 2024
ISBN: 9781481459204
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Dec. 6, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2024
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
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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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