A lively tale about the unexpected magic that comes from helping one another.
Asher’s middle-grade novel offers a story of familial bonds, unexpected courage, and the remarkable possibilities that unfold when people lift each other up.
Things haven’t been going well for seventh grader Evie Lefkowitz. Ever since her father died two years ago, she’s successfully kept her mother away from every potential suitor—until now. Her mom is suddenly over the moon about an upcoming date with Mr. Mitchell, the assistant principal at Evie’s middle school. As if that weren’t awkward enough, her mother volunteers her to tutor Joey Ceraco, a boy to whom she hasn’t spoken since kindergarten. Joey, along with his best friend, Tommy Halliday, is notorious for making trouble. Evie’s life as the cantor’s daughter at Temple Shir Shalom has kept her far away from kids like Joey, and she usually sticks with her more responsible friends, Spencer and Rachel. A questionable science project and a classmate’s scheme to release the lab’s praying mantises sweeps Evie into a whirlwind of shifting friendships, unlikely alliances, and a daring after-school rescue. Amid the chaos, she begins to realize that sometimes, making a little trouble is necessary to stand up for what’s right—and to discover who one is meant to be. Over the course of this novel, Asher delivers a warm, sharply observed middle-grade tale that effectively captures the turbulence of early adolescence, as well as the power of unlikely connections. It’s a satisfying story that offers a clear message that it takes real courage to stand up for one’s beliefs: “That’s rare, you know,” says social studies teacher Mr. Fish at one point. “Hardly anyone is brave enough.” Evie’s first-person narration is relatable throughout, and the novel brims with authentic characters, pitch-perfect dialogue, and emotional truth, making it a story that young readers will want to revisit.
A lively tale about the unexpected magic that comes from helping one another.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2025
ISBN: 9798992481839
Page Count: 260
Publisher: PJ Publishing
Review Posted Online: Sept. 2, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
A sly, side-splitting hoot from start to finish.
The dreary prospect of spending a lifetime making caskets instead of wonderful inventions prompts a young orphan to snatch up his little sister and flee. Where? To the circus, of course.
Fortunately or otherwise, John and 6-year-old Page join up with Boz—sometime human cannonball for the seedy Wandering Wayfarers and a “vertically challenged” trickster with a fantastic gift for sowing chaos. Alas, the budding engineer barely has time to settle in to begin work on an experimental circus wagon powered by chicken poop and dubbed (with questionable forethought) the Autopsy. The hot pursuit of malign and indomitable Great-Aunt Beauregard, the Coggins’ only living relative, forces all three to leave the troupe for further flights and misadventures. Teele spins her adventure around a sturdy protagonist whose love for his little sister is matched only by his fierce desire for something better in life for them both and tucks in an outstanding supporting cast featuring several notably strong-minded, independent women (Page, whose glare “would kill spiders dead,” not least among them). Better yet, in Boz she has created a scene-stealing force of nature, a free spirit who’s never happier than when he’s stirring up mischief. A climactic clutch culminating in a magnificently destructive display of fireworks leaves the Coggin sibs well-positioned for bright futures. (Illustrations not seen.)
A sly, side-splitting hoot from start to finish. (Adventure. 11-13)Pub Date: April 12, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-06-234510-3
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Walden Pond Press/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
An engaging novel-in-poems that imagines one earnest, impassioned teenage girl’s experience of the Japanese-American...
Crystal-clear prose poems paint a heart-rending picture of 13-year-old Mina Masako Tagawa’s journey from Seattle to a Japanese-American internment camp during World War II.
This vividly wrought story of displacement, told from Mina’s first-person perspective, begins as it did for so many Japanese-Americans: with the bombs dropping on Pearl Harbor. The backlash of her Seattle community is instantaneous (“Jap, Jap, Jap, the word bounces / around the walls of the hall”), and Mina chronicles its effects on her family with a heavy heart. “I am an American, I scream / in my head, but my mouth is stuffed / with rocks; my body is a stone, like the statue / of a little Buddha Grandpa prays to.” When Roosevelt decrees that West Coast Japanese-Americans are to be imprisoned in inland camps, the Tagawas board up their house, leaving the cat, Grandpa’s roses and Mina’s best friend behind. Following the Tagawas from Washington’s Puyallup Assembly Center to Idaho’s Minidoka Relocation Center (near the titular town of Eden), the narrative continues in poems and letters. In them, injustices such as endless camp lines sit alongside even larger ones, such as the government’s asking interned young men, including Mina’s brother, to fight for America.
An engaging novel-in-poems that imagines one earnest, impassioned teenage girl’s experience of the Japanese-American internment. (historical note) (Verse/historical fiction. 11-14)Pub Date: March 1, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-8075-1739-0
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Whitman
Review Posted Online: Jan. 28, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
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