Visually dreamlike, textually grounded: a deft balance proving that a single-issue exploration needn’t be formulaic or dry.
After five years of leukemia treatments, a 15-year-old gets her prognosis.
“In just a few minutes, they’re going to tell me how much time I have left to live,” opens this slim volume holding a full-bodied story. As the narrator walks down a hospital corridor, the door at the end appears so small it almost vanishes, showing how far away her fate still feels. While waiting, she takes readers through her years of treatment, touching on medical, emotional, and social aspects as well as hospital smells and sounds. She experiences romance; she has strong but unidealized parents. Cancer clichés receive welcome push back: Her best friend’s death was “definitely not because she wasn’t strong enough or didn’t fight hard enough,” and her own process isn’t a “battle…because there was nothing I could do to fight it. All I could do was let everything happen.” The titular spoiler sets this reassuringly apart from cancer stories that lean on suspense. Ferrer illustrates every page in pen and watercolor, using mostly reds and greens of low intensity that range dramatically from pale to dark; blacks and browns are secondary. Some visual elements are unnerving and fantastical—doors and tiles at a slant, bodies boneless or full of Swiss cheese–like holes. Compositions are ever shifting. Most characters’, including the protagonist’s, skin tones range from pallor to healthy pink.
Visually dreamlike, textually grounded: a deft balance proving that a single-issue exploration needn’t be formulaic or dry. (Picture book. 9-15)Pub Date: Jan. 29, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-78603-977-4
Page Count: 96
Publisher: Frances Lincoln
Review Posted Online: Oct. 27, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Characters to love, quips to snort at, insights to ponder: typical Spinelli.
For two teenagers, a small town’s annual cautionary ritual becomes both a life- and a death-changing experience.
On the second Wednesday in June, every eighth grader in Amber Springs, Pennsylvania, gets a black shirt, the name and picture of a teen killed the previous year through reckless behavior—and the silent treatment from everyone in town. Like many of his classmates, shy, self-conscious Robbie “Worm” Tarnauer has been looking forward to Dead Wed as a day for cutting loose rather than sober reflection…until he finds himself talking to a strange girl or, as she would have it, “spectral maiden,” only he can see or touch. Becca Finch is as surprised and confused as Worm, only remembering losing control of her car on an icy slope that past Christmas Eve. But being (or having been, anyway) a more outgoing sort, she sees their encounter as a sign that she’s got a mission. What follows, in a long conversational ramble through town and beyond, is a day at once ordinary yet rich in discovery and self-discovery—not just for Worm, but for Becca too, with a climactic twist that leaves both ready, or readier, for whatever may come next. Spinelli shines at setting a tongue-in-cheek tone for a tale with serious underpinnings, and as in Stargirl (2000), readers will be swept into the relationship that develops between this adolescent odd couple. Characters follow a White default.
Characters to love, quips to snort at, insights to ponder: typical Spinelli. (Fiction. 12-15)Pub Date: Aug. 3, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-593-30667-3
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 31, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2021
This is no didactic near-future warning of present evils, but a cinematic adventure featuring endearing, compelling heroes
A gripping thriller in dystopic future Los Angeles.
Fifteen-year-olds June and Day live completely different lives in the glorious Republic. June is rich and brilliant, the only candidate ever to get a perfect score in the Trials, and is destined for a glowing career in the military. She looks forward to the day when she can join up and fight the Republic’s treacherous enemies east of the Dakotas. Day, on the other hand, is an anonymous street rat, a slum child who failed his own Trial. He's also the Republic's most wanted criminal, prone to stealing from the rich and giving to the poor. When tragedies strike both their families, the two brilliant teens are thrown into direct opposition. In alternating first-person narratives, Day and June experience coming-of-age adventures in the midst of spying, theft and daredevil combat. Their voices are distinct and richly drawn, from Day’s self-deprecating affection for others to June's Holmesian attention to detail. All the flavor of a post-apocalyptic setting—plagues, class warfare, maniacal soldiers—escalates to greater complexity while leaving space for further worldbuilding in the sequel.
This is no didactic near-future warning of present evils, but a cinematic adventure featuring endearing, compelling heroes . (Science fiction. 12-14)Pub Date: Nov. 29, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-399-25675-2
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: April 8, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2011
BOOK TO SCREEN
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