An ambitious story that suffers from a lack of clarity.
Sometimes family is the friends you make and sometimes the friends you make turn out to be family.
In 1927 England, 11-year-old Floralie Alice Laurel and her older brother, Tom, survive by selling flowers—Floralie from a basket on the street and Tom from his shop. They also get help from their grandmother. However, Grandmama’s help comes with strings attached. Grandmama owns an orphanage, and she is convinced that Floralie would be better off there and less likely to succumb to the mental illness experienced by their artist mother. In an effort to escape Grandmama’s clutches and find her mother, Floralie accepts the help of a quiet boy living in the attic over the flower shop and the local librarian, who is blind. They escape with her to France to find someone who can decipher the flowers she found hidden in the wall of the attic. This confusing series of events relies heavily on coincidence and is delivered in language that is often as flowery as Floralie’s sales job. Interesting flashbacks are woven well into the story, and the quirky relationship Floralie has with the world is intriguing. Mental illness plays a confusing role in the story, presented as an affliction that Floralie’s mother suffers from but with no clear explanation or exploration of it. A few black-and-white sketches illustrate the cast of white characters.
An ambitious story that suffers from a lack of clarity. (Fiction. 10-14)Pub Date: May 1, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-4998-0668-7
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Yellow Jacket
Review Posted Online: March 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2018
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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Some readers may feel that the resolution comes a mite too easily, but most will enjoy the journey and be pleased when...
Two sisters make an unauthorized expedition to their former hometown and in the process bring together the two parts of their divided family.
Dooley packs plenty of emotion into this eventful road trip, which takes place over the course of less than 24 hours. Twelve-year-old Ophelia, nicknamed Fella, and her 16-year-old sister, Zoey Grace, aka Zany, are the daughters of a lesbian couple, Shannon and Lacy, who could not legally marry. The two white girls squabble and share memories as they travel from West Virginia to Asheville, North Carolina, where Zany is determined to scatter Mama Lacy’s ashes in accordance with her wishes. The year is 2004, before the Supreme Court decision on gay marriage, and the girls have been separated by hostile, antediluvian custodial laws. Fella’s present-tense narration paints pictures not just of the difficulties they face on the trip (a snowstorm, car trouble, and an unlikely thief among them), but also of their lives before Mama Lacy’s illness and of the ways that things have changed since then. Breathless and engaging, Fella’s distinctive voice is convincingly childlike. The conversations she has with her sister, as well as her insights about their relationship, likewise ring true. While the girls face serious issues, amusing details and the caring adults in their lives keep the tone relatively light.
Some readers may feel that the resolution comes a mite too easily, but most will enjoy the journey and be pleased when Fella’s family figures out how to come together in a new way . (Historical fiction. 10-14)Pub Date: April 4, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-399-16504-7
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: Jan. 31, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
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