An engrossing tale of women fighting for a chance to defend their country.
In this debut middle-grade novel, a tween girl in the World War II era finds inspiration in female fighter pilots.
Dawn Springfield’s family moves from Chicago to Sweetwater, Texas, to be closer to her grandfather. The 12-year-old girl is devastated by the recent losses of her grandmother and a beloved horse, and she dreads visits from her perpetually angry, always working salesman dad. But things soon look up. She makes a new friend; she gets a new horse; and she reunites with her fighter pilot aunt. Georgia Wells had flown planes for the British Royal Air Force since before America’s involvement in the war. Unfortunately, once the United States joined the conflict, her squadron of female pilots was told to “go home.” Still, the women can offer their skills in Texas, where they’ll ferry damaged, new, and repaired planes to wherever they’re needed. That’s also where Dawn becomes a volunteer for the Women Airforce Service Pilots program. While she’s already in awe of her “fearless,” adventurous aunt, Dawn befriends myriad women who fight to sit in the cockpit, despite the country’s apparent reluctance to accept female pilots. Though Hui’s novel is primarily from a tween’s perspective, there are plenty of spotlights on the historically based pilots. The varied bunch includes those who flew with Georgia in Britain and new recruits in Texas. They face obstacles not just as women grappling for their place in aviation, but as individuals with their own personal lives as well. Dawn, meanwhile, is a superb young hero who takes jerks in stride, be they bullies or her father. Her ambition and her admiration for these pilots are infectious. Sadly, this short novel neither shows the women in the pilot’s seat nor describes the feelings and sights they experience in the air. The author caps off her book with intriguing particulars about real-life WASPs who bravely handled numerous challenging and dangerous assignments in wartime.
An engrossing tale of women fighting for a chance to defend their country.Pub Date: July 4, 2022
ISBN: 979-8-98629-980-8
Page Count: 200
Publisher: Kokomo Entertainment Inc.
Review Posted Online: July 22, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
