A solid mystery that discusses data privacy and journalistic integrity.
After Ashley filmed Coach Kelly dancing in her sports bra and it went viral, she was relieved of her role as reporter for the school news program.
Together with her best friend, cameraperson Maya, and their video editor friend, Brielle, she forms the Renegade Reporters. The sixth graders decide to start a YouTube show about news events in Baltimore. Ashley discovers that Van Ness, the media company sponsoring the school news and creator of the software students use, has selected her classmate Harry, the lead anchor, as a young creative to feature on their website. Ash wants to interview company founder Maria Van Ness because she feels it’s unethical for them to promote Harry without disclosing their sponsorship. When she and Maya show up at the company headquarters, they accidentally discover that Van Ness is collecting personal data from their young users. The novel then becomes a lesson on journalistic investigation and cybersecurity, with the team researching, interviewing experts, and zeroing in on their target. Whether middle-grade readers will be concerned about this important issue is questionable, but the unfolding of the investigation is skillfully handled, and kids will cheer for the perspicacious young reporters. Jewish Ash has two dads; Maya is cued as South Asian Indian, and the cover shows Brielle as Black but nothing in the text corroborates this.
A solid mystery that discusses data privacy and journalistic integrity. (author's note) (Fiction. 9-12)Pub Date: Aug. 10, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-593-32303-8
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: June 10, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2021
On equal footing with a garden-variety potato.
The new kid in school endures becoming the school mascot.
Ben Hardy has never cared for potatoes, and this distaste has become a barrier to adjusting to life in his new Idaho town. His school’s mascot is the Spud, and after a series of misfortunes, Ben is enlisted to don the potato costume and cheer on his school’s team. Ben balances his duties as a life-sized potato against his desperate desire to hide the fact that he’s the dork in the suit. After all, his cute new crush, Jayla, wouldn’t be too impressed to discover Ben’s secret. The ensuing novel is a fairly boilerplate middle–grade narrative: snarky tween protagonist, the crush that isn’t quite what she seems, and a pair of best friends that have more going on than our hero initially believes. The author keeps the novel moving quickly, pushing forward with witty asides and narrative momentum so fast that readers won’t really mind that the plot’s spine is one they’ve encountered many times before. Once finished, readers will feel little resonance and move on to the next book in their to-read piles, but in the moment the novel is pleasant enough. Ben, Jayla, and Ben’s friend Hunter are white while Ellie, Ben’s other good pal, is Latina.
On equal footing with a garden-variety potato. (Fiction. 10-12)Pub Date: March 24, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-11866-5
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Nov. 23, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
Debut author Greenwald takes on the persona of Charlie Joe Jackson, a middle-school boy who hates reading. His avoidance...
Charlie Joe will do just about anything to avoid reading in this humorous cautionary tale for book-hating middle-grade students.
Debut author Greenwald takes on the persona of Charlie Joe Jackson, a middle-school boy who hates reading. His avoidance techniques get him into serious trouble with his parents, his teachers and his friends. After a year of avoiding reading—paying off a friend in ice-cream sandwiches to read books for him and manipulating his friends so he won’t have to read for the all-important position-paper project—Charlie Joe is forced to spend his summer vacation writing a book about his poor choices. Charlie Joe’s insider knowledge of the inner machinations of middle-school cliques will make younger readers smile in anticipation, and his direct address to readers makes make him feel like an older buddy showing the way. Sprinkled into the narrative are “Charlie Joe’s Tips” to avoiding reading books, written on faux notebook paper, that serve as a little diversion from the plot. As amusing as this is, Charlie Joe’s voice is not consistent and occasionally jars with the intelligent, smart-guy sarcasm that characterizes most of Charlie Joe’s prose.Pub Date: July 5, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-59643-691-6
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Roaring Brook Press
Review Posted Online: June 20, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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