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THE NO PLACE CAT

Tess, 12, finds emotional comfort in a stray cat she befriends after running away from her efficient, sensible father and stepmother to live with her slapdash, irresponsible mother. When Tess first meets her “enemies,” her soon-to-be stepmother and stepsiblings, she tells herself that these “are the aliens who have captured my father, and I shall not like them.” And Tess, a poor student who is messy and feels trapped by her tidy stepmother’s multitude of rules, dislikes living with them. But the final straw comes when Annie, Tess’s three-year-old stepsister, destroys an extra-credit social-studies assignment Tess has been diligently working on. Fed up and furious, Tess runs away, hoofing it to her mother’s home, which requires camping overnight at a state park. At the campgrounds, a stray cat unexpectedly adopts her, and follows her all the way to her mother’s small, cramped condo. Tess, who has been feeling lonely and unloved, develops a powerful connection to her feline friend, but her mother hates cats and her dad is allergic. How Tess solves these various difficulties is the meat of the story, but it’s a surprisingly bland dish. Tess’s mother is so indifferent to Tess’s needs that she borders on negligent, the result being that Tess’s rather flavorless self-sacrificing father and well-organized stepmother look good in contrast. This, in turn, causes the narrative to feel lopsided, making Tess’s final decision seem almost preordained. Nonetheless, readers, especially children of divorce, should relate to Tess and find her a sympathetic protagonist. (Fiction. 10-14)

Pub Date: April 22, 2002

ISBN: 0-618-09644-2

Page Count: 160

Publisher: Clarion Books

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2002

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AMAL UNBOUND

Inspired by Malala Yousafzai and countless unknown girls like her, Saeed’s timely and stirring middle-grade debut is a...

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A Pakistani girl’s dreams of an education dissolve when she is forced into indentured servitude.

Bookish Amal, who lives in a small village in Punjab, Pakistan, dreams of becoming a teacher and a poet. When she inadvertently insults Jawad, the son of her village’s wealthy and influential, but corrupt, landlord, Khan Sahib, she is forced into indentured servitude with his family. Jawad assures Amal’s father that she will be “treated like all my servants, no better, no worse” and promises him that he will “let her visit twice a year like the others.” Once in her enslaver’s home, Amal is subject to Jawad’s taunts, which are somewhat mitigated by the kind words of his mother, Nasreen Baji, whose servant she becomes. Amal keeps her spirits up by reading poetry books that she surreptitiously sneaks from the estate library and teaching the other servant girls how to read and write. Amal ultimately finds a friend in the village’s literacy center—funded, ironically enough, by the Khan family—where she befriends the U.S.–educated teacher, Asif, and learns that the powerful aren’t invincible. Amal narrates, her passion for learning, love for her family, and despair at her circumstance evoked with sympathy and clarity, as is the setting.

Inspired by Malala Yousafzai and countless unknown girls like her, Saeed’s timely and stirring middle-grade debut is a celebration of resistance and justice. (Fiction. 10-14)

Pub Date: May 8, 2018

ISBN: 978-0-399-54468-2

Page Count: 240

Publisher: Nancy Paulsen Books

Review Posted Online: March 17, 2018

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2018

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GIRL'S BEST FRIEND

From the Maggie Brooklyn Mysteries series

In this series debut, Maggie Sinclair tracks down a dognapper and solves a mystery about the noises in the walls of her Brooklyn brownstone apartment building. The 12-year-old heroine, who shares a middle name—Brooklyn—with her twin brother, Finn, is juggling two dogwalking jobs she’s keeping secret from her parents, and somehow she attracts the ire of the dogs’ former walker. Maggie tells her story in the first person—she’s self-possessed and likable, even when her clueless brother invites her ex–best friend, now something of an enemy, to their shared 12th birthday party. Maggie’s attention to details helps her to figure out why dogs seem to be disappearing and why there seem to be mice in the walls of her building, though astute readers will pick up on the solution to at least one mystery before Maggie solves it. There’s a brief nod to Nancy Drew, but the real tensions in this contemporary preteen story are more about friendship and boy crushes than skullduggery. Still, the setting is appealing, and Maggie is a smart and competent heroine whose personal life is just as interesting as—if not more than—her detective work. (Mystery. 10-13)

   

 

Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2010

ISBN: 967-1-59990-525-9

Page Count: 208

Publisher: Bloomsbury

Review Posted Online: Sept. 15, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2010

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