Zinnia’s convinced nothing could be worse than her beloved older brother’s sudden, unexplained departure, which leaves her alone with their overbearing dentist mother—till a colony of honeybees takes up residence in her hair.
Zinnia responds by wearing a hoodie at all times and staying in her room to knit whenever possible. On a rare outing she meets unflappable Birch, the neighbor’s visiting nephew, who is the only person to notice Zinnia’s bees. Together they search for Adam and try to figure out how to divest Zinnia’s hair of her unwanted tenants. Davis’ debut demands that readers check their disbelief at the door. In addition to the bees, she draws secondary characters with broad brushes, especially do-gooder Dr. Flossdrop, who seems determined to alienate her entire family. But she manages to keep it together, embedding readers in Zinnia’s believable, often funny perspective with occasional cutaways to the bees, who narrate their side of the misadventure in a wry collective voice that combines snippets of bee biology with fancy (they break dance to “combat despair”). Bee cognoscenti will scoff at the sheer ridiculousness of the premise, but its extreme silliness works its own magic to mitigate this and other hard-to-believe moments, such as the ease with which the rift between Zinnia and her former BFFs seems to be healed. Zinnia, her family, and Birch are evidently white. Horton’s illustrations not seen.
Not flawless but decidedly offbeat and emotionally true. (Fabulism. 9-12)Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-62370-867-2
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Capstone Young Readers
Review Posted Online: May 31, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2017
Categories: CHILDREN'S FAMILY | CHILDREN'S SOCIAL THEMES
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The author of the Anastasia books as well as more serious fiction (Rabble Starkey, 1987) offers her first historical fiction—a story about the escape of the Jews from Denmark in 1943.
Five years younger than Lisa in Carol Matas' Lisa's War (1989), Annemarie Johansen has, at 10, known three years of Nazi occupation. Though ever cautious and fearful of the ubiquitous soldiers, she is largely unaware of the extent of the danger around her; the Resistance kept even its participants safer by telling them as little as possible, and Annemarie has never been told that her older sister Lise died in its service. When the Germans plan to round up the Jews, the Johansens take in Annemarie's friend, Ellen Rosen, and pretend she is their daughter; later, they travel to Uncle Hendrik's house on the coast, where the Rosens and other Jews are transported by fishing boat to Sweden. Apart from Lise's offstage death, there is little violence here; like Annemarie, the reader is protected from the full implications of events—but will be caught up in the suspense and menace of several encounters with soldiers and in Annemarie's courageous run as courier on the night of the escape. The book concludes with the Jews' return, after the war, to homes well kept for them by their neighbors.
A deftly told story that dramatizes how Danes appointed themselves bodyguards—not only for their king, who was in the habit of riding alone in Copenhagen, but for their Jews. (Historical fiction. 9-12)Pub Date: April 1, 1989
ISBN: 0547577095
Page Count: 156
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: Oct. 17, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1989
Categories: CHILDREN'S SOCIAL THEMES | CHILDREN'S HISTORICAL FICTION
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This pitch-perfect contemporary novel gently explores the past’s repercussions on the present
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Eleven-year-old Brooklynite Genie has “worry issues,” so when he and his older brother, Ernie, are sent to Virginia to spend a month with their estranged grandparents while their parents “try to figure it all out,” he goes into overdrive.
First, he discovers that Grandpop is blind. Next, there’s no Internet, so the questions he keeps track of in his notebook (over 400 so far) will have to go un-Googled. Then, he breaks the model truck that’s one of the only things Grandma still has of his deceased uncle. And he and Ernie will have to do chores, like picking peas and scooping dog poop. What’s behind the “nunya bidness door”? And is that a gun sticking out from Grandpop’s waistband? Reynolds’ middle-grade debut meanders like the best kind of summer vacation but never loses sense of its throughline. The richly voiced third-person narrative, tightly focused through Genie’s point of view, introduces both brothers and readers to this rural African-American community and allows them to relax and explore even as it delves into the many mysteries that so bedevil Genie, ranging from "Grits? What exactly are they?" to, heartbreakingly, “Why am I so stupid?” Reynolds gives his readers uncommonly well-developed, complex characters, especially the completely believable Genie and Grandpop, whose stubborn self-sufficiency belies his vulnerability and whose flawed love both Genie and readers will cherish.
This pitch-perfect contemporary novel gently explores the past’s repercussions on the present . (Fiction. 9-12)Pub Date: May 3, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4814-1590-3
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Caitlyn Dlouhy/Atheneum
Review Posted Online: March 30, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2016
Categories: CHILDREN'S SOCIAL THEMES | CHILDREN'S FAMILY
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