by Helen Frost ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 14, 2017
Frost pulls out all the stops in this heartwarming tale of family in the remaking: everything a novel-in-poems should be.
A young girl and her sister share a pivotal summer at the lake with their family.
Following on Applesauce Weather (2016), her recent book for young middle graders, Frost again explores familial intimacy from a number of revealing perspectives. In poems told mostly from 10-year-old Claire’s vantage, her 13-year-old sister, Abigail, negotiates her budding adolescence and feelings for two boys at the lake where the white family vacations each summer. Claire marvels at Abigail’s transformation into “Abi,” the “queen / of Eastside Beach,” who’s developed a “whole new talking-to-boys voice.” Both girls also reckon with the infusion of their new stepmother and a baby on the way into the family dynamic they’ve known with their father since their mother died suddenly when Claire was an infant. Frost deftly shows the value of openness to compassion and personal growth among parent, child, and sibling, using her mastery of poetic form to subtly introduce differences of voice in the poems of Claire, Abi, and the somewhat omniscient perspective of the lake itself. With her signature formalist touch, Frost plays with acrostics and other forms, occasionally embedding well-known lines of famous poems into her own; notes to these are in the backmatter.
Frost pulls out all the stops in this heartwarming tale of family in the remaking: everything a novel-in-poems should be. (Verse fiction. 10-16)Pub Date: March 14, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-374-30303-7
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Dec. 5, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2016
Share your opinion of this book
More by Helen Frost
BOOK REVIEW
by Helen Frost ; illustrated by Rick Lieder
BOOK REVIEW
by Helen Frost
BOOK REVIEW
by Helen Frost ; illustrated by Rob Shepperson
by Soman Chainani ; illustrated by Iacopo Bruno ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 14, 2013
Rich and strange (and kitted out with an eye-catching cover), but stronger in the set pieces than the internal logic.
Chainani works an elaborate sea change akin to Gregory Maguire’s Wicked (1995), though he leaves the waters muddied.
Every four years, two children, one regarded as particularly nice and the other particularly nasty, are snatched from the village of Gavaldon by the shadowy School Master to attend the divided titular school. Those who survive to graduate become major or minor characters in fairy tales. When it happens to sweet, Disney princess–like Sophie and her friend Agatha, plain of features, sour of disposition and low of self-esteem, they are both horrified to discover that they’ve been dropped not where they expect but at Evil and at Good respectively. Gradually—too gradually, as the author strings out hundreds of pages of Hogwarts-style pranks, classroom mishaps and competitions both academic and romantic—it becomes clear that the placement wasn’t a mistake at all. Growing into their true natures amid revelations and marked physical changes, the two spark escalating rivalry between the wings of the school. This leads up to a vicious climactic fight that sees Good and Evil repeatedly switching sides. At this point, readers are likely to feel suddenly left behind, as, thanks to summary deus ex machina resolutions, everything turns out swell(ish).
Rich and strange (and kitted out with an eye-catching cover), but stronger in the set pieces than the internal logic. (Fantasy. 11-13)Pub Date: May 14, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-06-210489-2
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Feb. 12, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2013
Share your opinion of this book
More In The Series
by Soman Chainani ; illustrated by Iacopo Bruno
by Soman Chainani ; illustrated by Iacopo Bruno
by Soman Chainani ; illustrated by Iacopo Bruno
More by Soman Chainani
BOOK REVIEW
by Soman Chainani ; illustrated by RaidesArt
BOOK REVIEW
by Soman Chainani ; illustrated by RaidesArt
BOOK REVIEW
by Soman Chainani ; illustrated by Julia Iredale
More About This Book
BOOK TO SCREEN
by Katherine Marsh ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 7, 2018
A captivating book situated in present-day discourse around the refugee crisis, featuring two boys who stand by their high...
Two parallel stories, one of a Syrian boy from Aleppo fleeing war, and another of a white American boy, son of a NATO contractor, dealing with the challenges of growing up, intersect at a house in Brussels.
Ahmed lost his father while crossing the Mediterranean. Alone and broke in Europe, he takes things into his own hands to get to safety but ends up having to hide in the basement of a residential house. After months of hiding, he is discovered by Max, a boy of similar age and parallel high integrity and courage, who is experiencing his own set of troubles learning a new language, moving to a new country, and being teased at school. In an unexpected turn of events, the two boys and their new friends Farah, a Muslim Belgian girl, and Oscar, a white Belgian boy, successfully scheme for Ahmed to go to school while he remains in hiding the rest of the time. What is at stake for Ahmed is immense, and so is the risk to everyone involved. Marsh invites art and history to motivate her protagonists, drawing parallels to gentiles who protected Jews fleeing Nazi terror and citing present-day political news. This well-crafted and suspenseful novel touches on the topics of refugees and immigrant integration, terrorism, Islam, Islamophobia, and the Syrian war with sensitivity and grace.
A captivating book situated in present-day discourse around the refugee crisis, featuring two boys who stand by their high values in the face of grave risk and succeed in drawing goodwill from others. (Historical fiction. 10-14)Pub Date: Aug. 7, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-250-30757-6
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Roaring Brook Press
Review Posted Online: June 10, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2018
Share your opinion of this book
More by Katherine Marsh
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
by Katherine Marsh ; illustrated by Kelly Murphy
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Hey there, book lover.
We’re glad you found a book that interests you!
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.
Don’t fret. We’ll find you.