by Jamie Sumner ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 1, 2019
An honest, emotionally rich take on disability, family, and growing up.
A middle schooler with cerebral palsy faces a new school and family upheaval in Sumner’s debut.
Twelve-year-old Ellie Cowan dreams of becoming a great baker; when she’s not penning letters to celebrity chefs, she’s practicing recipes. But sometimes—especially when her single mom’s protectiveness goes overboard—her CP feels like “the Go to Jail card in Monopoly: No matter where you are, it always shoots you back to zero.” When Ellie and her mom temporarily move from Nashville, Tennessee, to Eufaula, Oklahoma, to help care for Grandpa, who suffers from Alzheimer’s disease, Ellie struggles with being not only “the new kid in the wheelchair” at school, but one of the ostracized “trailer park kids.” But after Ellie befriends outspoken aspiring singer Coralee and fact-reciting “mega geek” Bert (who is, Ellie observes, “probably on the spectrum” but undiagnosed in this small town with little support), the quirky trio find themselves cooking up ways for Ellie to stay—“maybe forever.” Her voice equal parts vulnerable, reflective, and deliciously wry, Ellie is refreshingly complex. Kids navigating disabilities may find her frank frustration with inaccessibility, illness, and patronization particularly cathartic, but readers with and without disabilities will recognize her desire to belong. The mother of a son with CP, the author portrays Ellie and her mom’s loving but fraught relationship with achingly vivid accuracy, bringing the tension between Ellie’s craving for independence and her mother’s fears to a satisfying resolution. Characters, including Ellie, appear white.
An honest, emotionally rich take on disability, family, and growing up. (Fiction. 10-14)Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5344-4255-9
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Atheneum
Review Posted Online: Sept. 1, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
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by Jamie Sumner
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by Elinor Teele ; illustrated by Ben Whitehouse ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 12, 2016
A sly, side-splitting hoot from start to finish.
The dreary prospect of spending a lifetime making caskets instead of wonderful inventions prompts a young orphan to snatch up his little sister and flee. Where? To the circus, of course.
Fortunately or otherwise, John and 6-year-old Page join up with Boz—sometime human cannonball for the seedy Wandering Wayfarers and a “vertically challenged” trickster with a fantastic gift for sowing chaos. Alas, the budding engineer barely has time to settle in to begin work on an experimental circus wagon powered by chicken poop and dubbed (with questionable forethought) the Autopsy. The hot pursuit of malign and indomitable Great-Aunt Beauregard, the Coggins’ only living relative, forces all three to leave the troupe for further flights and misadventures. Teele spins her adventure around a sturdy protagonist whose love for his little sister is matched only by his fierce desire for something better in life for them both and tucks in an outstanding supporting cast featuring several notably strong-minded, independent women (Page, whose glare “would kill spiders dead,” not least among them). Better yet, in Boz she has created a scene-stealing force of nature, a free spirit who’s never happier than when he’s stirring up mischief. A climactic clutch culminating in a magnificently destructive display of fireworks leaves the Coggin sibs well-positioned for bright futures. (Illustrations not seen.)
A sly, side-splitting hoot from start to finish. (Adventure. 11-13)Pub Date: April 12, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-06-234510-3
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Walden Pond Press/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2016
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by Tae Keller ; illustrated by Alexandria Neonakis ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 6, 2018
A compassionate glimpse of mental illness accessible to a broad audience. (Fiction. 10-14)
A middle school story in which parental depression manifests itself in absence.
Natalie’s vivacious botanist mother (who’s white) has retreated from life, leaving her therapist husband (who’s biracial) and daughter to fill the gaping hole she has left. With the help of an egg-drop contest and a scientific-method project, Natalie explores breakable things and the nurturing of hope. Narrating in first-person, the mixed-race seventh-grader (1/4 Korean and 3/4 white) is drawn to her mother’s book, titled How to Grow A Miracle. It reminds her of when her mother was excited by science and questions and life. With a STEM-inspired chapter framework and illustrated with Neonakis’ scientific drawings, Keller’s debut novel uses the scientific method to unpack the complex emotions depression can cause. Momentum builds over nine months as Natalie observes, questions, researches, experiments, and analyzes clues to her mother’s state of mind. Providing support and some comic relief are her two sidekicks, Dari (a smart Indian immigrant boy) and Twig (Natalie’s wealthy, white best friend). The diversity of the characters provides identity and interest, not issue or plotline. Tension peaks at the egg-drop contest, as the three friends plan to use the prize winnings to bring Natalie’s mother back to life with a gift of a rare cobalt blue orchid. Paralleling their scientific progress, Natalie reluctantly experiences her first visits to talk therapy, slowly opening like a tight bloom.
A compassionate glimpse of mental illness accessible to a broad audience. (Fiction. 10-14)Pub Date: March 6, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5247-1566-3
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Nov. 21, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2017
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by Tae Keller ; illustrated by Geraldine Rodríguez
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by Tae Keller ; illustrated by Geraldine Rodríguez
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by Tae Keller ; illustrated by Geraldine Rodríguez
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