A short and sweet story that will encourage deeper conversations around shame, honesty, and courage.
The unexpected loss of a dear friendship leads to anxiety and ultimately resilience in television writer and producer Hyman’s first middle-grade novel.
Mango is a thoughtful 12-year-old black girl at Trueheart Middle School when her BFF gets a new cellphone, and suddenly they are on different planes of existence. When Mango accidentally drowns the phone in the bathroom sink, the fallout includes a lost job for her dad, a lost friend, and, above all, a lost sense of self and trust in others. “From then on, I was going to be uber-careful about who I got close to and who I let get close to me.” Fortunately, despite her mounting anxiety, Mango learns that not everyone is as mercurial as her ex–BFF. Izzy, an exuberant Mexican-American classmate and former preschool play date that she had lost touch with, is the first of many to show Mango what a true friendship based on honesty and trust can look like. From cast mates in the school play to mentors and parents, a diverse community surrounds Mango as she learns to believe in herself and others again. Even former enemies can turn out to be friends when one learns to be real. Though this book clearly helps fill the need for minority female leads, the universal themes it addresses give it broad appeal across ages, genders, and cultural backgrounds.
A short and sweet story that will encourage deeper conversations around shame, honesty, and courage. (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: June 6, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-4549-2332-9
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Sterling
Review Posted Online: March 28, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Quirky and smart.
Is going back in time about changing outcomes or changing perspective? McKinley’s going to find out.
Sixth grader McKinley is excited about Time Hop, her town’s annual history celebration, which this time is celebrating the year 1993. In 1993, her father was also a sixth grader—and at the same school where the event is held. Taught to sew by her Grandma Bev, a talented seamstress even after suffering a stroke in 1993 that affected her speech and left half her body paralyzed, McKinley creates a fabulously retro outfit for the fashion show. But on the big day, her single father needs to work, and he asks McKinley to stay home to give Grandma Bev her medications. Instead, she decides to bring her grandma to the Time Hop, but it’s a disaster. McKinley has a fight with her best friend, then her father shows up and orders her off the runway. McKinley runs away—and right back in time to 1993. The third-person voice is bright and energetic, while vivid descriptions capture the cast of predominantly White characters as their present and past selves. McKinley is especially endearing, ringing true as a confused, creative, well-meaning tween who realizes she may have been sent back in time to solve a problem—but which one? Or is this journey all about gaining insight so she can better handle her life? The philosophical questions are delivered with a light touch.
Pub Date: Aug. 22, 2023
ISBN: 9781524738624
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Philomel
Review Posted Online: May 24, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2023
Readers may not wish to leave this magical world
Van, who is hard of hearing and uses hearing aids, discovers the true mission of the City Collection Agency: to collect wayward wishes.
One summer in an unnamed North American city, Van spots a girl and a squirrel fishing for a coin that has just been tossed into a fountain by wisher. He soon learns that both girl and squirrel belong to a secret society of people and talking animals who collect and store wishes made as folks toss coins in fountains, extinguish birthday candles, break wishbones, and so forth. Turns out, when uncontained, wishes can come true, and their magic is often chaotic, unpredictable, and dangerous. Van is soon pulled into a power struggle when Mr. Falborg, a fan of Van’s opera-singer mother who is also aware of wishing magic, asks Van to find out just what the City Collection Agency has stored away. West states in her acknowledgements that she consulted with several deaf and hard-of-hearing students, and the descriptions of Van’s use of hearing aids, his struggles with background noise, and his ability to quickly rethink misheard speech based on context clues ring true. Although the plot gets a little bogged down in comings and goings and a few characters seem extraneous, West has constructed a fast-paced and engrossing tale of a boy wrestling with the consequences of power and responsibility. The book assumes a white default.
Readers may not wish to leave this magical world . (Fantasy. 8-12)Pub Date: Oct. 9, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-06-269169-9
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Greenwillow Books
Review Posted Online: July 29, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2018
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