Resonant and haunting.
In this stand-alone prequel to The King of Jam Sandwiches (2020), a 13-year-old foster-care veteran will do whatever it takes to make living with her troubled mom work for both of them—but as the costs mount, so do her doubts.
Nana, the last adult Harmony could depend on, died three years ago. Smart, observant Harmony, who presents white, knows how to put her naïve young social worker on the defensive and redirect her attention away from evidence of parental neglect. Still, Harmony doesn’t harbor unrealistic expectations—or hope—for her mother’s recovery from addiction. Understanding that rescue will be temporary, Harmony focuses her efforts on maintaining the status quo and family ties. While her mom works and parties, Harmony spends her nights alone. She gets a kind of security from pilfering small bills from her mom’s purse and hiding them in an old doll; other sources of security are Mr. Khaled, the elderly Syrian refugee who runs the convenience store opposite her apartment building, and Mr. James, her school principal, who takes her under his wing. Harmony finds friends to walk to school with, too. But as her mother sinks back into addiction, there’s no more money to squirrel away, and menacing drug dealers claim the funds Harmony’s saved for rent. Mr. Khaled, who knows that building a future requires the opportunity to dream and plan beyond one’s daily survival, gently tries to help Harmony face reality. This sobering work is a powerful and realistic portrait of a struggling child.
Resonant and haunting. (Fiction. 10-14)Pub Date: Feb. 11, 2025
ISBN: 9781459836426
Page Count: 264
Publisher: Orca
Review Posted Online: Nov. 9, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2024
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
BOOK TO SCREEN
An endearing protagonist runs the first, fast leg of Reynolds' promising relay.
Castle “Ghost” Cranshaw feels like he’s been running ever since his dad pulled that gun on him and his mom—and used it.
His dad’s been in jail three years now, but Ghost still feels the trauma, which is probably at the root of the many “altercations” he gets into at middle school. When he inserts himself into a practice for a local elite track team, the Defenders, he’s fast enough that the hard-as-nails coach decides to put him on the team. Ghost is surprised to find himself caring enough about being on the team that he curbs his behavior to avoid “altercations.” But Ma doesn’t have money to spare on things like fancy running shoes, so Ghost shoplifts a pair that make his feet feel impossibly light—and his conscience correspondingly heavy. Ghost’s narration is candid and colloquial, reminiscent of such original voices as Bud Caldwell and Joey Pigza; his level of self-understanding is both believably childlike and disarming in its perception. He is self-focused enough that secondary characters initially feel one-dimensional, Coach in particular, but as he gets to know them better, so do readers, in a way that unfolds naturally and pleasingly. His three fellow “newbies” on the Defenders await their turns to star in subsequent series outings. Characters are black by default; those few white people in Ghost’s world are described as such.
An endearing protagonist runs the first, fast leg of Reynolds' promising relay. (Fiction. 10-14)Pub Date: Aug. 30, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4814-5015-7
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Caitlyn Dlouhy/Atheneum
Review Posted Online: July 19, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2016
PROFILES
SEEN & HEARD
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