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
Cinematic, over-the-top decadence, a tense race against time, and lessons on what’s truly valuable.
A reward of $5,000,000 almost ruins everything for two seventh graders.
On a class trip to New York City, Felix and Benji find a wallet belonging to social media billionaire Laura Friendly. Benji, a well-off, chaotic kid with learning disabilities, swipes $20 from the wallet before they send it back to its owner. Felix, a poor, shy, rule-follower, reluctantly consents. So when Laura Friendly herself arrives to give them a reward for the returned wallet, she’s annoyed. To teach her larcenous helpers a lesson, Laura offers them a deal: a $20,000 college scholarship or slightly over $5 million cash—but with strings attached. The boys must spend all the money in 30 days, with legal stipulations preventing them from giving anything away, investing, or telling anyone about it. The glorious windfall quickly grows to become a chore and then a torment as the boys appear increasingly selfish and irresponsible to the adults in their lives. They rent luxury cars, hire a (wonderful) philosophy undergrad as a chauffeur, take their families to Disney World, and spend thousands on in-app game purchases. Yet, surrounded by hedonistically described piles of loot and filthy lucre, the boys long for simpler fundamentals. The absorbing spending spree reads like a fun family film, gleefully stuffed with the very opulence it warns against. Major characters are White.
Cinematic, over-the-top decadence, a tense race against time, and lessons on what’s truly valuable. (mathematical explanations) (Fiction. 10-12)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-17525-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: June 29, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2020
A solid debut: fluent, funny and eminently sequel-worthy.
Inventively tweaking a popular premise, Jensen pits two Incredibles-style families with superpowers against each other—until a new challenge rises to unite them.
The Johnsons invariably spit at the mere mention of their hated rivals, the Baileys. Likewise, all Baileys habitually shake their fists when referring to the Johnsons. Having long looked forward to getting a superpower so that he too can battle his clan’s nemeses, Rafter Bailey is devastated when, instead of being able to fly or something else cool, he acquires the “power” to strike a match on soft polyester. But when hated classmate Juanita Johnson turns up newly endowed with a similarly bogus power and, against all family tradition, they compare notes, it becomes clear that something fishy is going on. Both families regard themselves as the heroes and their rivals as the villains. Someone has been inciting them to fight each other. Worse yet, that someone has apparently developed a device that turns real superpowers into silly ones. Teaching themselves on the fly how to get past their prejudice and work together, Rafter, his little brother, Benny, and Juanita follow a well-laid-out chain of clues and deductions to the climactic discovery of a third, genuinely nefarious family, the Joneses, and a fiendishly clever scheme to dispose of all the Baileys and Johnsons at once. Can they carry the day?
A solid debut: fluent, funny and eminently sequel-worthy. (Adventure. 10-12)Pub Date: Jan. 21, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-06-220961-0
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Nov. 1, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2013
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