A gentle epistolary novel requiring at least three hankies. Eleven-year-old Will writes to his seven-year-old sister Wenny. A truck hit them both on their way to a craft store, and Wenny was killed. Will remembers a dark tunnel and a bright warm light; he remembers seeing his little sister fly past him into that light. Through months of healing his broken parts, Will writes to Wenny about how much he misses her; about how angry he is that she left them; about how pinched and cold his father and his pregnant mother are; and how there is no light or air around them, and no words for him. The tropes of boyhood—family pets, toy action figures, a tree house, a spitting contest, and, above all, the creek tunnel the kids call “the tunnel of death”—function almost as sacraments. Will’s dad moves out for a while, Will and his mother try to re-make Wenny’s room for the new baby, Will finds a way to celebrate Wenny’s birthday. His grief comes in almost textbook steps, but Carey’s (Molly’s Fire, 2000) sweet and pointed language saves it from mawkishness, illuminating those steps vividly. Like Susan Katz’s Snowdrops for Cousin Ruth (1998), it allows a heartrending glimpse into what happens in a family when a child dies. (Fiction. 8-12)
Pub Date: July 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-689-84294-5
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Atheneum
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2002
With young readers diagnosed with anxiety in ever increasing numbers, this book offers a necessary mirror to many.
Young Raina is 9 when she throws up for the first time that she remembers, due to a stomach bug. Even a year later, when she is in fifth grade, she fears getting sick.
Raina begins having regular stomachaches that keep her home from school. She worries about sharing food with her friends and eating certain kinds of foods, afraid of getting sick or food poisoning. Raina’s mother enrolls her in therapy. At first Raina isn’t sure about seeing a therapist, but over time she develops healthy coping mechanisms to deal with her stress and anxiety. Her therapist helps her learn to ground herself and relax, and in turn she teaches her classmates for a school project. Amping up the green, wavy lines to evoke Raina’s nausea, Telgemeier brilliantly produces extremely accurate visual representations of stress and anxiety. Thought bubbles surround Raina in some panels, crowding her with anxious “what if”s, while in others her negative self-talk appears to be literally crushing her. Even as she copes with anxiety disorder and what is eventually diagnosed as mild irritable bowel syndrome, she experiences the typical stresses of school life, going from cheer to panic in the blink of an eye. Raina is white, and her classmates are diverse; one best friend is Korean American.
With young readers diagnosed with anxiety in ever increasing numbers, this book offers a necessary mirror to many. (Graphic memoir. 8-12)Pub Date: Sept. 17, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-545-85251-7
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Graphix/Scholastic
Review Posted Online: May 11, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2019
Telgemeier’s bold colors, superior visual storytelling, and unusual subject matter will keep readers emotionally engaged and...
Catrina narrates the story of her mixed-race (Latino/white) family’s move from Southern California to Bahía de la Luna on the Northern California coast.
Dad has a new job, but it’s little sister Maya’s lungs that motivate the move: she has had cystic fibrosis since birth—a degenerative breathing condition. Despite her health, Maya loves adventure, even if her lungs suffer for it and even when Cat must follow to keep her safe. When Carlos, a tall, brown, and handsome teen Ghost Tour guide introduces the sisters to the Bahía ghosts—most of whom were Spanish-speaking Mexicans when alive—they fascinate Maya and she them, but the terrified Cat wants only to get herself and Maya back to safety. When the ghost adventure leads to Maya’s hospitalization, Cat blames both herself and Carlos, which makes seeing him at school difficult. As Cat awakens to the meaning of Halloween and Day of the Dead in this strange new home, she comes to understand the importance of the ghosts both to herself and to Maya. Telgemeier neatly balances enough issues that a lesser artist would split them into separate stories and delivers as much delight textually as visually. The backmatter includes snippets from Telgemeier’s sketchbook and a photo of her in Día makeup.
Telgemeier’s bold colors, superior visual storytelling, and unusual subject matter will keep readers emotionally engaged and unable to put down this compelling tale. (Graphic fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Sept. 13, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-545-54061-2
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: July 1, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2016
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