A sincere cautionary tale about finding one’s voice and putting others’ needs before one’s own.
Mallory Marsh is eager to please.
Whether she’s agreeing to look after her chaotic twin brothers to help her overworked and recently separated mom or simply saying that everyone else’s preferred pizza toppings are her favorites, too, Mal always puts everyone else’s needs before her own. She’s placated by stealthy acts of rebellion, lying about her age so she can publish her webcomic, “Metal-Plated Heart,” whose characters are closely based on her classmates, and attending the library’s comic club when her parents think she’s at swim team practice. When Mal meets nonbinary cutie Noa at comic club, she begins to realize that neither gay nor straight might be the right label for her. Meanwhile, the library is planning a drag storytime, and Mal is anxious about the protesters who are trying to shut it down. Mal is at a relatable stage on her queer journey, and questioning middle schoolers will surely see themselves in her story. Most of her problems stem from conflict avoidance, and Leahy establishes that this trait comes from her father, who tells Mal that he’s working on expressing his emotions in therapy, though there’s no mention that Mal could benefit from therapy as well. Dynamic panels from the webcomic are interspersed throughout, offering additional insights into Mal’s emotions. Mal’s mother is Korean, and her father is implied white; Noa has brown skin.
A sincere cautionary tale about finding one’s voice and putting others’ needs before one’s own. (author's note) (Fiction. 9-13)Pub Date: Nov. 19, 2024
ISBN: 9780063255531
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Quill Tree Books/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
Fast-paced and plot-driven.
In his latest, prolific author Gratz takes on Hitler’s Olympic Games.
When 13-year-old American gymnast Evie Harris arrives in Berlin to compete in the 1936 Olympic Games, she has one goal: stardom. If she can bring home a gold medal like her friend, the famous equestrian-turned-Hollywood-star Mary Brooks, she might be able to lift her family out of their Dust Bowl poverty. But someone slips a strange note under Evie’s door, and soon she’s dodging Heinz Fischer, the Hitler Youth member assigned to host her, and meeting strangers who want to make use of her gymnastic skills—to rob a bank. As the games progress, Evie begins to see the moral issues behind their sparkling facade—the antisemitism and racism inherent in Nazi ideology and the way Hitler is using the competition to support and promote these beliefs. And she also agrees to rob the bank. Gratz goes big on the Mission Impossible–style heist, which takes center stage over the actual competitions, other than Jesse Owens’ famous long jump. A lengthy and detailed author’s note provides valuable historical context, including places where Gratz adapted the facts for storytelling purposes (although there’s no mention of the fact that before 1952, Olympic equestrian sports were limited to male military officers). With an emphasis on the plot, many of the characters feel defined primarily by how they’re suffering under the Nazis, such as the fictional diver Ursula Diop, who was involuntarily sterilized for being biracial.
Fast-paced and plot-driven. (Historical fiction. 9-12)Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2025
ISBN: 9781338736106
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2025
Rich and strange (and kitted out with an eye-catching cover), but stronger in the set pieces than the internal logic.
Chainani works an elaborate sea change akin to Gregory Maguire’s Wicked (1995), though he leaves the waters muddied.
Every four years, two children, one regarded as particularly nice and the other particularly nasty, are snatched from the village of Gavaldon by the shadowy School Master to attend the divided titular school. Those who survive to graduate become major or minor characters in fairy tales. When it happens to sweet, Disney princess–like Sophie and her friend Agatha, plain of features, sour of disposition and low of self-esteem, they are both horrified to discover that they’ve been dropped not where they expect but at Evil and at Good respectively. Gradually—too gradually, as the author strings out hundreds of pages of Hogwarts-style pranks, classroom mishaps and competitions both academic and romantic—it becomes clear that the placement wasn’t a mistake at all. Growing into their true natures amid revelations and marked physical changes, the two spark escalating rivalry between the wings of the school. This leads up to a vicious climactic fight that sees Good and Evil repeatedly switching sides. At this point, readers are likely to feel suddenly left behind, as, thanks to summary deus ex machina resolutions, everything turns out swell(ish).
Rich and strange (and kitted out with an eye-catching cover), but stronger in the set pieces than the internal logic. (Fantasy. 11-13)Pub Date: May 14, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-06-210489-2
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Feb. 12, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2013
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