A small-town Francophile dreams big in this story of economic hardships and parental incarceration.
Cleveland Potts has one goal in life: move to Paris, France. Her plan consists of taking ballet lessons (for culture), cooking French cuisine, viewing impressionist art, then applying to the American School of Paris. She already studies French vocabulary with language CDs from the public library, and she’s sure the other steps are within her reach. However, Sassafras, Florida, isn’t a bastion of culture, and her first ballet class ends in disgrace. What’s more, she recently lost all the money from her Paris fund (earned by walking dogs); her father took it after stealing from his boss to feed a gambling addiction. Now he’s in jail, and Cleveland struggles to reconcile her anger for his transgression with how desperately she and the rest of the family want him home. She’s also starting seventh grade with only one friend from her trailer park, an aspiring chef who’s slowly coming out as gay. Gephart once again compassionately creates complex characters, including the members of Cleveland’s presumed-white family, who are profoundly earnest in their collective and individual dreams. Readers won’t “pity” Cleveland (she wouldn’t want any), but they’ll be rooting for her all the way. Includes a glossary of Cleveland’s French phrases, a recipe, and notes on incarcerated parents.
Une histoire d’espoir—a story of hope. (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Oct. 8, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5344-4086-9
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: June 25, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2019
Categories: CHILDREN'S SOCIAL THEMES | CHILDREN'S FAMILY
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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. 19, 2019
Categories: GENERAL GRAPHIC NOVELS & COMICS | CHILDREN'S FAMILY
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BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
An accused murderer is thrust into an assassin training program.
Seventeen-year-old Signal Deere is serving hard time after a hazy night with her former best friend, Rose, which ended with Rose’s body in her lap, an emotional trial, and the media moniker the “Girl from Hell.” After her caseworker, Dave, assures Signal there’s no way she’ll get a successful appeal, he offers her an alternative: being shipped off to a mysterious camp and enrolled in a top-secret government training program unofficially known as the Teen Killers Club. There, Signal and other adolescent Class A felons (the most dangerous kind) undergo various drills—among them, dismembering fake corpses and dissolving flesh in acid—in preparation for eventually being used as assassins against government targets. The teens have been injected with a device remotely controlled by their trainers that will kill them if they attempt to escape the camp or otherwise disobey orders. As Signal nurses an attraction to sensitive tattooed Javier and fights her feelings for handsome sociopath Erik, she begins to piece together what really happened that night with Rose. Sparks crafts a page-turner with a disturbingly unusual premise, snappy dialogue, and characters that go deeper than their heinous crimes. Signal and Erik are assumed White; love interest Javier is cued as Latinx, and there is some diversity in the supporting cast.
A mystery/thriller that’s equal parts heartfelt and shocking. (Thriller. 15-adult)Pub Date: Nov. 10, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-64385-229-4
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Crooked Lane
Review Posted Online: Sept. 10, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2020
Categories: TEEN MYSTERY & THRILLER | GENERAL THRILLER & SUSPENSE
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With Ivan’s movie out this year from Disney, expect great interest—it will be richly rewarded.
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Tiny, sassy Bob the dog, friend of The One and Only Ivan (2012), returns to tell his tale.
Wisecracking Bob, who is a little bit Chihuahua among other things, now lives with his girl, Julia, and her parents. Happily, her father works at Wildworld Zoological Park and Sanctuary, the zoo where Bob’s two best friends, Ivan the gorilla and Ruby the elephant, live, so Bob gets to visit and catch up with them regularly. Due to an early betrayal, Bob doesn’t trust humans (most humans are good only for their thumbs); he fears he’s going soft living with Julia, and he’s certain he is a Bad Dog—as in “not a good representative of my species.” On a visit to the zoo with a storm threatening, Bob accidentally falls into the gorilla enclosure just as a tornado strikes. So that’s what it’s like to fly. In the storm’s aftermath, Bob proves to everyone (and finally himself) that there is a big heart in that tiny chest…and a brave one too. With this companion, Applegate picks up where her Newbery Medal winner left off, and fans will be overjoyed to ride along in the head of lovable, self-deprecating Bob on his storm-tossed adventure. His wry doggy observations and attitude are pitch perfect (augmented by the canine glossary and Castelao’s picture dictionary of dog postures found in the frontmatter). Gorilla Ivan described Julia as having straight, black hair in the previous title, and Castelao's illustrations in that volume showed her as pale-skinned. (Finished art not available for review.)
With Ivan’s movie out this year from Disney, expect great interest—it will be richly rewarded. (afterword) (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: May 5, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-06-299131-7
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 25, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2020
Categories: CHILDREN'S ANIMALS | CHILDREN'S FAMILY | CHILDREN'S SOCIAL THEMES
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