Proud mountainfolk, the Coe family has resided in Indian Creek, North Carolina, since 1844. Joe Coe fixes electrical appliances; 12-year-old Dovey and 13-year-old Amos collect healing herbs to sell. Dovey's older sister, Caroline, is a rare beauty who has dreams of escaping small-town life. Their tranquil home life is threatened when Parnell Caraway, son of the richest man in town, sets his sights on Caroline. He is so determined to marry her and destroy her dreams of becoming a teacher that he forces her hand at a send-off party in her honor and faces public humiliation as a result. Unable to handle rejection, Parnell locks up the Coe's dog in revenge, forcing Dovey to retrieve it and to witness its brutal murder. She tries to stop it and is attacked by Parnell. When she awakens from the beating, Parnell is dead at her side and she is falsely accused of murder. Assigned an inexperienced district attorney, Dovey has to solve the murder herself or face imprisonment. In the end, she is spared the injustice of being sent to a girls’ detention center; Caroline owns up to the fact that her flirtations with Parnell have caused this disastrous result; and Amos reveals to his sister that he, in fact, killed Parnell to spare her additional abuse at his hands. Dovey’s fresh, clear voice in southern dialect cuts through the social behavior of the locale and time period to speak the truth, which all of the other older and wiser characters refuse to see. This fabulously feisty heroine will win your heart. (Fiction. 10-12)
Pub Date: May 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-689-83174-9
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Atheneum
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2000
BOOK REVIEW
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
A solid debut: fluent, funny and eminently sequel-worthy.
Inventively tweaking a popular premise, Jensen pits two Incredibles-style families with superpowers against each other—until a new challenge rises to unite them.
The Johnsons invariably spit at the mere mention of their hated rivals, the Baileys. Likewise, all Baileys habitually shake their fists when referring to the Johnsons. Having long looked forward to getting a superpower so that he too can battle his clan’s nemeses, Rafter Bailey is devastated when, instead of being able to fly or something else cool, he acquires the “power” to strike a match on soft polyester. But when hated classmate Juanita Johnson turns up newly endowed with a similarly bogus power and, against all family tradition, they compare notes, it becomes clear that something fishy is going on. Both families regard themselves as the heroes and their rivals as the villains. Someone has been inciting them to fight each other. Worse yet, that someone has apparently developed a device that turns real superpowers into silly ones. Teaching themselves on the fly how to get past their prejudice and work together, Rafter, his little brother, Benny, and Juanita follow a well-laid-out chain of clues and deductions to the climactic discovery of a third, genuinely nefarious family, the Joneses, and a fiendishly clever scheme to dispose of all the Baileys and Johnsons at once. Can they carry the day?
A solid debut: fluent, funny and eminently sequel-worthy. (Adventure. 10-12)Pub Date: Jan. 21, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-06-220961-0
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Nov. 1, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
