Lacks the nuance necessary to do justice to this sensitive subject.
After her brother dies, a girl tries to navigate seventh grade in a new school filled with students who are also coping with trauma.
After Lucy’s 5-year-old brother, Theo, dies from a rare congenital heart condition, her parents, who commute to work in Washington, D.C., decide they need a fresh start. They move from suburban Maryland to Queensland, a fictional Virginia suburb marked by an elementary school shooting four years previously. In the town of 2,500, 32 people were killed; all the children who died were in third grade, and when Lucy arrives, she’s the first new student to join the shattered class. Not only that, her bedroom in the new house belonged to a girl who was a shooting victim. Lucy’s new classmates talk openly and frequently about the shooting, but Lucy plans to keep Theo a secret. While struggling with losing touch with her best friend from home and her parents’ emotional distance, she tentatively befriends Avery, a girl the other students ostracize. Isler’s debut unfortunately feels overwrought, and some plot points strain credulity; for example, in densely populated Northern Virginia, the students from the elementary building that was torn down in the wake of the shooting would have been reassigned to other schools. Additionally, Avery’s journey from pariah to acceptance happens far too smoothly. Lucy and her family are Jewish and, like Avery, read as White.
Lacks the nuance necessary to do justice to this sensitive subject. (author’s note, discussion questions) (Fiction. 10-12)Pub Date: Sept. 7, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-5415-9911-6
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Carolrhoda
Review Posted Online: June 28, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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