Misses the mark.
A 12-year-old white girl is determined to fulfill her dream of becoming a country-music star.
Maya lives in Nashville and is determined to make it big in music, so she is thrilled when cute, white schoolmate Jack asks her if she will be his singing partner for the upcoming local auditions of the reality TV show Dueling Duets. Then her parents inform her that they have bought an RV and are selling their house, and the family will be traveling around the country. Maya is devastated. Not only will she miss the audition with its chance for fame, but what if Jack forgets her? While Nall’s writing is competent, Maya is a thin protagonist. Her first-person, present-tense narration reiterates her desire to get back to Nashville so often that readers may be tempted to yell “we know!” after the umpteenth time. She continually texts her friend Kenzie, ignoring the natural beauty of the national parks that the RV is traveling through, to hatch surprisingly immature plans to get back to Nashville. By the end of the story, Maya develops a smidgen of awareness that her self-absorbed actions have negatively affected others, but this denouement is nearly neutralized by the story’s ongoing plot assumption that 12-year-old females relate their self-worth to the approval of others, whether it be fame or boys—a tired, unempowering notion.
Misses the mark. (Fiction. 8-11)Pub Date: Nov. 8, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4814-5817-7
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Aladdin
Review Posted Online: Aug. 29, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
However the compelling fitness of theme and event and the apt but unexpected imagery (the opening sentences compare the...
At a time when death has become an acceptable, even voguish subject in children's fiction, Natalie Babbitt comes through with a stylistic gem about living forever.
Protected Winnie, the ten-year-old heroine, is not immortal, but when she comes upon young Jesse Tuck drinking from a secret spring in her parents' woods, she finds herself involved with a family who, having innocently drunk the same water some 87 years earlier, haven't aged a moment since. Though the mood is delicate, there is no lack of action, with the Tucks (previously suspected of witchcraft) now pursued for kidnapping Winnie; Mae Tuck, the middle aged mother, striking and killing a stranger who is onto their secret and would sell the water; and Winnie taking Mae's place in prison so that the Tucks can get away before she is hanged from the neck until....? Though Babbitt makes the family a sad one, most of their reasons for discontent are circumstantial and there isn't a great deal of wisdom to be gleaned from their fate or Winnie's decision not to share it.
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1975
ISBN: 0312369816
Page Count: 164
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: April 13, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1975
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
Certain to elicit both gales of giggles and winces of sympathy (not to mention recognition) from young readers.
First volume of a planned three, this edited version of an ongoing online serial records a middle-school everykid’s triumphs and (more often) tribulations through the course of a school year.
Largely through his own fault, mishaps seem to plague Greg at every turn, from the minor freak-outs of finding himself permanently seated in class between two pierced stoners and then being saddled with his mom for a substitute teacher, to being forced to wrestle in gym with a weird classmate who has invited him to view his “secret freckle.” Presented in a mix of legible “hand-lettered” text and lots of simple cartoon illustrations with the punch lines often in dialogue balloons, Greg’s escapades, unwavering self-interest and sardonic commentary are a hoot and a half.
Certain to elicit both gales of giggles and winces of sympathy (not to mention recognition) from young readers. (Fiction. 9-11)Pub Date: April 1, 2007
ISBN: 0-8109-9313-9
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Amulet/Abrams
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2007
SEEN & HEARD
PERSPECTIVES
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