An emotional meltdown at a figure skating competition gets 12-year-old Kaitlin kicked out of her high-status skating club and jettisoned by her longtime coach in this middle-grade sports novel.
Rejected by the rest of the respected clubs, Kaitlin must join a rink filled with misfits and problem skaters that is seen as a joke in her hypercompetitive world. There’s a lot of great stuff in Nall’s figure skating novel, narrated in the first person and largely aimed at girls. The atmosphere is particularly redolent, and the setup—Kaitlin’s outburst and its unexpected life-changing aftermath—gives fascinating insight into the largely veiled world of junior competitive skating. Although a technically adept skater, what’s keeping Kaitlin back is her inability to make the emotional inner connection she needs to skate her heart out. How she learns to do this is the stuff of the duller and more muddled middle, which features more characters and situations than the novel can effectively handle. The formerly rule-following Kaitlin rebels in small but important ways, finds the courage to ask for what she wants, crushes on a cute boy and makes real friends. Unfortunately, Nall’s thesis, that this journey gives Kaitlin the emotional experience she needs to soar as an artist, fails to convince.
After a strong beginning, this atmospheric but overstuffed novel flounders, rallying at the end to pull off a touching finish. (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: March 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4814-1911-6
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Aladdin
Review Posted Online: Nov. 18, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
Categories: CHILDREN'S SOCIAL THEMES | CHILDREN'S ENTERTAINMENT & SPORTS
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BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
With Ivan’s movie out this year from Disney, expect great interest—it will be richly rewarded.
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Tiny, sassy Bob the dog, friend of The One and Only Ivan (2012), returns to tell his tale.
Wisecracking Bob, who is a little bit Chihuahua among other things, now lives with his girl, Julia, and her parents. Happily, her father works at Wildworld Zoological Park and Sanctuary, the zoo where Bob’s two best friends, Ivan the gorilla and Ruby the elephant, live, so Bob gets to visit and catch up with them regularly. Due to an early betrayal, Bob doesn’t trust humans (most humans are good only for their thumbs); he fears he’s going soft living with Julia, and he’s certain he is a Bad Dog—as in “not a good representative of my species.” On a visit to the zoo with a storm threatening, Bob accidentally falls into the gorilla enclosure just as a tornado strikes. So that’s what it’s like to fly. In the storm’s aftermath, Bob proves to everyone (and finally himself) that there is a big heart in that tiny chest…and a brave one too. With this companion, Applegate picks up where her Newbery Medal winner left off, and fans will be overjoyed to ride along in the head of lovable, self-deprecating Bob on his storm-tossed adventure. His wry doggy observations and attitude are pitch perfect (augmented by the canine glossary and Castelao’s picture dictionary of dog postures found in the frontmatter). Gorilla Ivan described Julia as having straight, black hair in the previous title, and Castelao's illustrations in that volume showed her as pale-skinned. (Finished art not available for review.)
With Ivan’s movie out this year from Disney, expect great interest—it will be richly rewarded. (afterword) (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: May 5, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-06-299131-7
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 25, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2020
Categories: CHILDREN'S ANIMALS | CHILDREN'S FAMILY | CHILDREN'S SOCIAL THEMES
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The author of the Anastasia books as well as more serious fiction (Rabble Starkey, 1987) offers her first historical fiction—a story about the escape of the Jews from Denmark in 1943.
Five years younger than Lisa in Carol Matas' Lisa's War (1989), Annemarie Johansen has, at 10, known three years of Nazi occupation. Though ever cautious and fearful of the ubiquitous soldiers, she is largely unaware of the extent of the danger around her; the Resistance kept even its participants safer by telling them as little as possible, and Annemarie has never been told that her older sister Lise died in its service. When the Germans plan to round up the Jews, the Johansens take in Annemarie's friend, Ellen Rosen, and pretend she is their daughter; later, they travel to Uncle Hendrik's house on the coast, where the Rosens and other Jews are transported by fishing boat to Sweden. Apart from Lise's offstage death, there is little violence here; like Annemarie, the reader is protected from the full implications of events—but will be caught up in the suspense and menace of several encounters with soldiers and in Annemarie's courageous run as courier on the night of the escape. The book concludes with the Jews' return, after the war, to homes well kept for them by their neighbors.
A deftly told story that dramatizes how Danes appointed themselves bodyguards—not only for their king, who was in the habit of riding alone in Copenhagen, but for their Jews. (Historical fiction. 9-12)Pub Date: April 1, 1989
ISBN: 0547577095
Page Count: 156
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: Oct. 17, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1989
Categories: CHILDREN'S SOCIAL THEMES | CHILDREN'S HISTORICAL FICTION
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