From Wilson (The Suitcase Kid, 1997, etc.), a lightweight British import that is a telling study of twindom's trials and tribulations. Doing their best to make everyone miserable in the process, ten-year-old identical twins Ruby and Garnet reluctantly adapt to changes in their family and themselves in this revealing double journal. As close in other ways as twins can be, Ruby is otherwise as rude and bossy as Garnet is shy and wimpy. Ruby doesn't like Rose, the new woman in their father Richard's life, nor his decision to move to a small town and open a bookshop, nor their new teacher, nor their classmates, so Garnet trails along on a campaign of pranks and bad behavior, offering only token resistance. Then the twins, at Ruby's instigation, take an entrance exam for an expensive boarding school and only Garnet is offered a scholarship. Wilson works with a broad brush, exaggerating the differences in the twins' personalities, and endowing Rose and Richard with inhuman funds of patience. While readers will spend most of the book wondering why Ruby wasn't strangled long ago, she takes the impending separation from her twin so much harder than Garnet that she becomes a tragic figure. In the end, the two part with hugs and tears, and start making new friends almost immediately. Their alternating accountsRuby's long and chatty, Garnet's short but eloquentare illustrated with simple black-and-white drawings, each twin done by a different artist, to no distinguishable effect. (Fiction. 9-11)
Pub Date: March 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-385-32312-3
Page Count: 185
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1998
Opens as standard living-with-disability tale, grows into a heartwarming story about a community discovering activism.
When Ava’s only friend moves away, anxiety makes finding a new social circle daunting.
Ava’s best friend, Zelia, has always been her prop and support. It’s tough being an 11-year-old with a pacemaker; the noncompaction cardiomyopathy she was born with (Ava had heart surgery when she was only 4) combines with intense anxiety to leave Ava self-loathing and socially isolated. Her dad teaches cotillion classes for sixth graders, and Ava, like her older brothers before her, is required to attend, to dance, and to make excruciating small talk. A girl in class invites her to an improv group, and Ava reluctantly agrees. To her shock, improv, which celebrates failure, is amazing for her anxiety. But the improv theater and the waterfront where it’s located are under threat from pricey real estate developers. Saving the area from gentrification will require a committed activist, though, and Ava can barely speak in public. Cotillion and improv give Ava tool sets to use to live with anxiety, and the cause gives her a motivation. The conclusion is optimistically uncomplicated, but in a story that successfully explores the complexities of chronic illness mixed with mental illness, the comfort is welcome. Ava is biracial, Japanese American and white, and lives in a diverse community; the vice principal and Ava’s therapist are black, and the mean real estate developer is almost stereotypically white.
Opens as standard living-with-disability tale, grows into a heartwarming story about a community discovering activism. (author’s note, improv games) (Fiction. 9-11)Pub Date: June 9, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-06-280349-8
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Balzer + Bray/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 28, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Superb storytelling.
When Bug’s traditional summer routine is shaken up, her entire life changes.
It’s 1987, and 10-year-old Beatrice “Bug” Contreras has a plan: spend her summer months with her brother, Danny, on Venice Beach as she has for the past two years. But when 14-year-old Danny—who has matured into the name Daniel—wants more time to himself, Bug learns she will be instead hanging out with 11-year-old Frankie, the nephew of Phillip, her mother’s best friend and their upstairs neighbor. Frankie, who is visiting from Ohio, is trans at a time before this identity was well understood and has not been treated with kindness or acceptance by his parents. Frankie and Bug become fascinated with trying to solve the case of the Midnight Marauder, a serial killer who has been striking in the area. When Phillip is attacked, ending up in the hospital, their investigation swivels, and the titular characters uncover a few untold family tales. Bug and Daniel’s late father was a professor from El Salvador with Indigenous ancestry who spoke Nahuatl as well as Spanish and English. Biracial identity is explored in part through the differences in the siblings’ physical appearances: Their mother is implied to be White, and Daniel—who resembles their father more than Bug does—experiences more overt racism and dives into an exploration of his Salvadoran heritage. Readers interested in complex emotional development and relationships will appreciate each character's subtle nuances.
Superb storytelling. (resources, author’s note) (Fiction. 9-11)Pub Date: Oct. 12, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-5344-8253-1
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Aladdin
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2021
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