A quirky coming-of-age for girls ready to discover their cool aunt’s stash of vintage copies of Sassy. In her first months of high school, Janie Gorman is discovering the unfortunate, not at all subtle differences between offbeat and off-putting as the daughter of a rather dilettantish farming family. Sure, she sews her own up-cycled clothes, creating skirts “made out of an old pair of jeans and some killer fabric scraps,” and embraces milking the farm’s goats, Loretta Lynn, Tammy Wynette and Patsy Cline. But to catch the bus on time, Janie occasionally forgets to remove the hay from her hair or scrape the goat dung from her shoes, and it’s getting her noticed, in a feeling-forced-to-hide-in-the-library-during-lunch kind of way. Encouraged by the sweet, thoughtful and utterly misnamed Monster Monroe to “live large” and embrace her whole, idiosyncratic self, Janie and her best friend, straight-laced and super-academic Sarah, go all-in. They hurl themselves into a project highlighting local heroes of the Civil Rights Era, learn to play bass and accordion and outgrow a hopeless shared crush on hunky jerk Jeremy Fitch. That’s a lot of ground to cover, and the plot occasionally teeters under the weight of its many developments and down-home secondary characters, but Janie’s voice—anxious, funny and winning—holds it all together as she finds and takes her place at school and on the farm. (Fiction. 11-14)
Pub Date: March 22, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-4169-9585-2
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Atheneum
Review Posted Online: Feb. 17, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Apple-flavored cotton candy: fast and tasty, possibly slightly poisonous.
In a modern wish-fulfillment fairy tale that applies and removes feminism like makeup—frequently, easily and with relish—Simone goes from That Weird Fat Girl to hottie.
Simone has pale skin, jet-black hair and lips so naturally red that her wannabe-stepmother smolders with jealousy. Hillary’s 28-year-old, zero-fat body and blond hair have Simone’s widowed father under “some kind of spell.” Snow White details sparkle: Classmate Jason’s “sort of a prince” in this wealthy Los Angeles neighborhood because his dad's Oscars make him royalty; Simone spends summertime in a house with seven men (her happy—get it?—brother and six others, including a sleepyhead with narcolepsy); Hillary evilly provides Hostess Apple Pies to trigger Simone’s apple allergy. The frothy danger matches the contemporary pop culture (Jersey Shore; Urban Dictionary) and brands (Saab; OPI vs. Essie). Simone’s first-person narration is wryly funny. However, messages mix: The text name-checks feminism, then counsels passivity because being “girl-like” is bad. Palmer conflates being “officially fat” (size 16) with Tastykake binges and emotional repression, and she imbues dieting to fit a size 8 dream dress with Simone’s new feeling that “I looked like… me.” Her real dream boy is African-American—Blush, one of the seven—yet offhanded racial jabs pepper the story.
Apple-flavored cotton candy: fast and tasty, possibly slightly poisonous. (Fiction. 11-14)Pub Date: July 19, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-14-241894-9
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Speak/Penguin
Review Posted Online: May 29, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Rushed revolution happens at lightning speed, leaving no time for character development.
Princess Eliza Windsor fights comic-book evil in a post-apocalyptic United Kingdom.
After the Seventeen Days of "earth-splitting quakes, torrential hurricanes, tornadoes, and tsunamis" nearly destroy civilization, the British Royal family is weakened and diminished. But however strained the means of the royals, the rest of Britain lives in abject poverty. From this imbalance arises the rebel New Guard of Cornelius Hollister, who murders Eliza's parents, topples the government, and kidnaps Eliza's brother and sister. Barely escaping with her life, Eliza takes refuge as an incognito trainee in the New Guard, where she's torn between the nastiness of the mean girl in charge and the kindness of the cute boy who defends her. The only way she'll escape to rescue her missing siblings is by rallying the people of Britain, who all seem desperate for a royal; apparently they've forgotten about Parliament. Luckily, the Scots near Eliza's country home of Balmoral Castle don't seem to notice Eliza constantly calling them "people of England," so she might even succeed at counterrevolution—if not geography. Americanism-laden prose does nothing to enhance Eliza's adventure.
Rushed revolution happens at lightning speed, leaving no time for character development. (Science fiction. 11-13)Pub Date: May 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-316-18548-6
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Poppy/Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: April 24, 2012
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