Important issues float through clouds of self-pity.
At odds with her changing self and family, one summer Agnes Moon pretends to be someone different—and meets others with secrets.
Twelve-year-old Vermonter Agnes, who has her white mother’s red hair and freckles and her biracial (white/Korean) dad’s dark eyes and light-brown skin, really hates her new curves and the idea of “becoming a woman.” She also feels left out: Her divorced parents, her older sister, and her best friend all seem to have moved on to other relationships. A first small lie allows her to spend the summer with her father. But he’s busy; she has plenty of time to explore. The lies multiply as she introduces herself as Chloe from Kansas, first to Stella and her grandmother at the general store and then to Fin, the attractive boy visiting nearby Fly Back Farm, and Harriet Hooper, the farm’s owner. As they gradually reveal some of their secrets, Agnes becomes increasingly uncomfortable in her own deceit but holds out until she collapses spectacularly and publicly. Having been exposed to the decisions made by and for teen mothers and intersex babies, as well as to someone who has been seriously depressed, she’s more willing to face her own personal and family concerns. While there’s no doubt many readers will find Agnes’ discontent familiar, it’s hard to avoid the feeling that these secondary characters and their concerns exist primarily for Agnes’ enlightenment. Except for Agnes and her dad, characters seem to be default white.
Important issues float through clouds of self-pity. (Fiction. 9-13)Pub Date: March 3, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5415-7820-3
Page Count: 296
Publisher: Carolrhoda
Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2019
Good Guys and Bad get just deserts in the end, and Stanley gets plenty of opportunities to display pluck and valor in this...
Sentenced to a brutal juvenile detention camp for a crime he didn't commit, a wimpy teenager turns four generations of bad family luck around in this sunburnt tale of courage, obsession, and buried treasure from Sachar (Wayside School Gets a Little Stranger, 1995, etc.).
Driven mad by the murder of her black beau, a schoolteacher turns on the once-friendly, verdant town of Green Lake, Texas, becomes feared bandit Kissin' Kate Barlow, and dies, laughing, without revealing where she buried her stash. A century of rainless years later, lake and town are memories—but, with the involuntary help of gangs of juvenile offenders, the last descendant of the last residents is still digging. Enter Stanley Yelnats IV, great-grandson of one of Kissin' Kate's victims and the latest to fall to the family curse of being in the wrong place at the wrong time; under the direction of The Warden, a woman with rattlesnake venom polish on her long nails, Stanley and each of his fellow inmates dig a hole a day in the rock-hard lake bed. Weeks of punishing labor later, Stanley digs up a clue, but is canny enough to conceal the information of which hole it came from. Through flashbacks, Sachar weaves a complex net of hidden relationships and well-timed revelations as he puts his slightly larger-than-life characters under a sun so punishing that readers will be reaching for water bottles.
Good Guys and Bad get just deserts in the end, and Stanley gets plenty of opportunities to display pluck and valor in this rugged, engrossing adventure. (Fiction. 9-13)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998
ISBN: 978-0-374-33265-5
Page Count: 233
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2000
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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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